Bestselling Conspiracy Thriller Trilogy: Sanctus, The Key, The Tower
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Athanasius approached its solitary entrance with his usual feeling of gnawing unease. A cold blue light swept across his palm as the scanner checked and verified his identity before a door slid open, allowing him into an airlock. He stepped inside and heard the door slide shut behind him. His claustrophobia deepened. He knew it would not leave him until he had exited the library. A light blinked above a second scanner, indicating that the airlock was doing whatever it needed to do to ensure no tainted air accompanied him into the hermetically sealed world beyond the final door. He waited. Felt the desiccated air already sucking moisture from the back of his throat. The light stopped blinking. A second door slid open and Athanasius stepped into the library.
The moment he passed through into the darkness, a circle of light grew and enveloped him. It extended just a few feet in every direction and matched his movements exactly, keeping him at its centre as he strode across the reception hall towards the archway leading into the main body of the library. As well as the carefully controlled climate – a constant sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit and thirty-five per cent relative humidity – the lighting was a marvel of modern engineering. It too had been progressively updated over the generations, with guttering candles making way for oil lamps, which in turn made way for electricity. The system of lighting it now utilized was not only the most advanced in the world, it was the only one of its kind. Like most of the recent technological improvements, it had been devised and engineered by one man: Athanasius’s great friend, Father Thomas.
From the moment Father Thomas had entered the Citadel over a decade previously he had been treated differently from the usual intake. Like most of the inhabitants of the mountain, his past was unknown, but whatever he had done in his life outside, it became immediately clear that he was an expert in the preservation of ancient documents and a genius with electronics. In his first year he had been given special authority, by the Prelate himself, to totally overhaul and update the library. It was a task that took him nearly seven years to complete, the first year alone spent purely on experimenting with different light frequencies and studying their effect on various inks and writing surfaces. The lighting system he had then designed and built was brilliant in its simplicity and had been inspired by the very first scholars who’d walked through the library with a single candle illuminating only their immediate surroundings, whilst leaving the rest of the collection in total darkness.
Using a system of movement, pressure and heat sensors, Father Thomas had created an environment in which anyone entering the library was tracked by a central computer that provided a narrow column of light, sufficient to illuminate no more than their immediate surroundings. This light would then follow them throughout the library, constantly pushing away the darkness as they walked through it, without contaminating any area in which they were not working. The system was so sensitive that each monk could be identified by tiny differences in their body temperature and slight fluctuations in air displacement due to their unique size and weight. It meant the computer could not only monitor the movement of each visitor, it also knew who they were and where they went, so acted as an added security measure policing the monks’ usage of the library.
Athanasius left the entrance hall now, following the thin filament of dim guide lamps set into the floor, marking the way through the darkness. Occasionally he came across other scholars flitting around like fireflies, trapped in their personal haloes of light, each one dimmer the further he progressed into the great library.
Father Thomas’s other great innovation had been to zone the library according to age, ink and paper types, and to adjust the lighting in each area to suit their particular properties. So, as Athanasius ventured deeper into the places where increasingly older and more fragile texts were kept, so his own circle of light became gradually more muted and orange. It was as if he were walking backwards through time, experiencing the same conditions that would have illuminated the documents when they had first been written.
Furthest from the entrance was the smallest and darkest chamber of all. The oldest, most delicate and most precious texts were housed here. Scraps of vellum worn thin by time and ancient words scratched lightly on brittle stones. The glow in the forbidden vault, on the very rare occasions it shone at all, was the deep and sombre red of the embers of a dying fire.
Only three people had perpetual right of entry to this room: the Prelate, the Abbot and Father Malachi, the chief librarian. Others could be granted special authority by any of these three to enter the vault, but it happened rarely. If someone entered the space without the correct authorization, either by design or mistake, the lights would remain off and a silent alarm would alert the guard permanently stationed by the entrance who would surge through the dark halls to deal with the intruder.
Punishment for entering the forbidden vault was traditionally harsh, always public, and served as the greatest single deterrent for ever being inclined to do so. In the past transgressors had been brought before the fully assembled college of priests and monks to have their eyes put out, in order to cleanse them of whatever they may have seen; their tongue torn out with red-hot pincers, so they could not repeat anything they had inadvertently learned; and molten lead poured into their ears, to burn away any forbidden words that had been whispered therein.
The offender’s broken body was then expelled from the Citadel as a warning to others of the dangers of disobedience and the pursuit of restricted knowledge. It was from this gruesome ritual that the phrase ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ sprang. There was a fourth, lesser known part of the saying which advised that you should also ‘Do no evil unto others’, a line which seemed somewhat irreconcilable when held up against the history of its origin.
Like everyone in the Citadel, Athanasius had heard the stories of what happened to those who strayed into the forbidden vault, but to his knowledge no one had been subjected to the punishment for hundreds of years. This was partly because the world had turned and such displays of barbarity were no longer tolerated, but mostly because no one dared enter without the requisite authority. He had been inside it only once before, when he had been appointed chamberlain, and had hoped he would never have cause to visit it again.
As he trudged dutifully through the gloom, his eyes fixed on the gossamer-thin filament embedded in the floor, he began to wonder about the purpose of his summons and whether there had been some terrible new discovery. Perhaps Samuel had somehow managed to gain access to the library between his escape and his doomed climb. Or made his way to the forbidden room and stolen or vandalized one of the sacred and irreplaceable texts …
Up ahead the thread of floor lights turned sharply right and disappeared behind the unseen upright of a stone wall. It marked the point where the pathway turned into the final corridor leading to the furthest vault. Whatever the reason the Abbot had summoned him, he would discover it soon enough.
23
‘The victim shows signs of recent laceration and trauma to hands and feet,’ Reis said as he continued his preliminary examination of the body. ‘The cuts are numerous. Deep. Down to the bone in some cases. Also irregular and torn. There are fragments of what look like rock embedded in some of the wounds. I’m removing them and bagging them for analysis.’
He held his hand over the microphone on the headset and turned to Arkadian.
‘He climbed up there before he jumped, didn’t he?’
Arkadian nodded. ‘There’s no ancient lift in there, far as we know.’
Reis turned back and looked at the ravaged hands and feet of the monk, picturing the monumental height of the Citadel in his mind. ‘Tough climb,’ he said quietly, before releasing his hand from the microphone and continuing.
‘The cuts to the victim’s hands and feet, though recent, show signs of significant blood coagulation, suggesting the injuries were sustained a good few hours ante-mortem. There’s scar tissue forming on some of the smaller cuts, in some cases grafting over the fragments of rock. I’d say, going purely on the extent of healing, that he’d been up there a few days before he jumped.’
He lowered the hand on to the cold ceramic table and examined the exposed arm.
‘The length of rope attached to the victim’s right wrist has also rubbed extensively on the skin, removing the epidermis. The rope is a rough, hemp-like weave, tough, and abrasive.’
‘It’s his belt,’ Arkadian said. Reis looked up and frowned. ‘Look at the cassock, around his waist.’
Reis switched his gaze to the middle of the dark, stained garment and spotted a thick leather loop stitched roughly to the cloth on one side and a tear on the other where its twin should have been. He’d noted other rips in the cassock, two above the hem and two by the wrists, but he’d missed this one.
‘The rope may be the victim’s belt,’ Reis stated for the record. ‘There are some leather loops round the middle of his cloak, though one appears to be missing. Again I will bag everything and send it across the hall for analysis.’
Arkadian reached behind Reis and pressed the flashing red square to pause the recording.
‘In other words,’ he said, ‘our guy climbed up the mountain using his belt as a makeshift rope, cut his hands and feet on the rocks in the process, hung around on the summit long enough for them to start healing, then threw himself off as soon as there was a big enough crowd to ruin my morning. Case closed.
‘Now, much as I’d love to hang around, I’ve got some less glamorous but nevertheless deserving cases to pursue. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll just borrow that phone over by the coffee pot and try to get on with some real police work.’ He turned and disappeared beyond the harsh white light of the examination table. ‘Just holler if you find any clues.’
‘Oh, I will.’ Reis reached for a pair of heavy-duty shears. ‘You sure you don’t want to watch? I’m about to cut his cloak off. Not every day you get to see a naked monk.’
‘You’re a sick man, Reis.’ Arkadian picked up the phone and wondered which of his six active cases he should catch up on first.
Reis looked down at the corpse and smiled. ‘Sick!’ he muttered to himself. ‘You try doing this every day and staying normal.’
He opened the shears, slipped them over the collar of the monk’s cassock and started to cut.
24
Athanasius followed the filament of light in the floor round the corner and into the long dark corridor where the forbidden vault lay waiting. If there was anyone there ahead of him he couldn’t see them. The blood-red light in the chamber was not designed to carry far. He hated the darkness, but he hated the fact that you couldn’t hear anything even more. He’d heard Thomas explaining it to Samuel once – something to do with a constant low-frequency signal, inaudible to the human ear, which disrupted all sound waves and prevented them from carrying further than the circle of light that surrounded you. It meant you could be ten feet from someone and still have no idea what they were saying. It ensured that all forty-two chambers, even when full of scholars passionately arguing theological points, remained in a permanent state of librarian silence. It also meant that, despite his rapid and purposeful march through the Bible-black corridors, Athanasius could not even draw comfort from the sound of his own footfalls.
He was halfway down the corridor when he saw it. Briefly, at the edge of his light. A white spectral flash in the dark.
Athanasius sprang backwards, scanning the blackness. Trying to glimpse again what he thought he had seen. Something smacked into his back and he whirled around. Saw the stone upright of a bookcase. Whipped his head back to try and penetrate the ominous darkness.
He saw it again.
At first, just the faintest of outlines, like a web drifting in the dark. Then, as the thing advanced, it began to solidify into the gaunt and shuffling shape of a man. His body was thin and bony, barely looking strong enough to support the cassock that hung around him like partially discarded skin, and his long, sparse hair hung down in front of sightless eyes. Despite the ghastly appearance of the slowly advancing monk Athanasius felt his whole body relax.
‘Brother Ponti,’ he breathed. ‘You gave me quite a start.’
It was the caretaker, an old monk specifically chosen for the task of cleaning and maintaining the great library because his blindness meant he needed no illumination to work by. He twitched his head in the direction of the voice, staring straight through Athanasius with his milky gaze. ‘I’m sorry,’ he rasped, his voice parched by the arid air. ‘I do try and keep to the walls so as not to bump into folk, but this section’s a bit on the narrow side, Brother …?’
‘Athanasius.’
‘Ah yes,’ Ponti nodded. ‘Athanasius. I remember you. You’ve been in there before, haven’t you?’ He waved in the direction of the vault.
‘Once,’ Athanasius replied.
‘That’s right.’ Brother Ponti nodded slowly, as if agreeing with himself. ‘Well,’ he said, turning stiffly towards the exit, ‘don’t let me keep you. You’ll find it’s already occupied. And if I were you, Brother, I wouldn’t keep him waiting.’
Then he turned once more and melted into the blackness.
25
It took Reis several minutes to slice through the saturated material of the monk’s cassock. He cut from collar to hem, then down each arm, careful not to disturb the body beneath. Rolling the corpse slightly, he then removed the garment and placed it in a steel tray ready for separate analysis.
The guy was in pretty good shape.
At least he would have been before he fell a thousand feet on to solid rock.
Reis tapped the red square on the computer screen with his knuckle and restarted the recording.
‘First impressions of the subject’s body match what one would expect to see following a fall from a great height: massive trauma to the torso, shards of fractured rib jutting out through several places on both sides of the thorax, totally in keeping with the types of compression fracture caused by the extraordinary deceleration of a body in freefall coming into contact with the ground.
‘The body is covered in thick, dark, coagulated blood from numerous puncture wounds. Both clavicles are fractured in several places, and the right one protrudes through the skin at the base of the neck. There also appears to be …’
He looked more closely.
‘… some kind of historical, uniform incision running horizontally across the neck from shoulder to shoulder.’
He took hold of the retractable hose arching over the examination table and squeezed the handle, directing a jet of water on to the neck and chest of the corpse. The sticky, dark film began to wash away.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Reis muttered.
He moved the spray across the rest of the body: first the chest, then the arms, then the legs. He paused the recording once more.
‘Hey, Arkadian,’ he called over his shoulder, still transfixed by the livid body on the slab. ‘You said you wanted a clue. How does this grab you?’
26
Athanasius stopped at the door, aware that he did not possess the right to enter the restricted room, and more than slightly fearful of what might happen if he did.
He looked inside.
The Abbot stood imposingly in the confined space, the red light seeming to radiate from him as if he were a demon glowing in the darkness. His back was to the door, so he could not see Athanasius. His eyes were fixed on a grid of fifteen apertures carved into the far wall, each containing a receptacle made from the same material as aircraft black box data recorders. Athanasius recalled Father Malachi telling him how they were strong enough to protect their precious contents even if the whole mountain fell upon them; that did little to comfort him now.
He glanced down at the invisible line on the floor and contemplated stepping boldly into the room, but the phrase ‘See no evil, hear no evil’ rose unbidden into his thoughts and he remained where he stood until the Abbot, either sensing his presence or wondering at the lack of it, turned and looked straight at him. Athanasius noted with relief that his master’s face, despite its unsettling crimson pall, did not display the glower of a man on the warpath but the thoughtfulness of one with a problem to solve.
‘Come in.’ The Abbot removed one of the boxes from its recess and carried it to the lectern in the centre of the room. Sensing Athanasius’s continued reluctance to step inside, he said, ‘I spoke to Malachi on my way through. You may enter the vault – for an hour at least.’
As Athanasius obeyed, a second red glow accompanied him across the vault, confirming that – for the time being – his presence was legitimate.
The lectern stood in the centre of the room, facing the entrance but with the reading surface angled away from it. Anyone standing at it would be warned of an approach by the tell-tale sign of the advancing light, and any book placed there could not be seen from outside.
‘I summoned you here,’ the Abbot said, ‘because I wish to show you something.’
He unlatched the box and gently opened it.
‘Do you have any idea what this might be?’
Athanasius leaned forward, his aura joining the Abbot’s to illuminate a book, bound with a single panel of slate with a bold symbol etched on to its surface – the symbol of the Tau.
His breath caught in his throat. He knew at once what it was, as much from descriptions he had read as the circumstances in which he was now discovering it.
‘A Heretic Bible,’ Athanasius said.
‘No,’ the Abbot corrected. ‘Not a Heretic Bible. The Heretic Bible. This is the last remaining copy.’
Athanasius gazed down upon the slate cover. ‘I thought they had all been destroyed.’
‘That is what we wish people to believe. What better way to prevent them from searching for something than to persuade them that it does not exist?’
Athanasius considered the wisdom of this. He had barely spared a thought for the legendary book in years, because he thought it was exactly that – a legend. Yet here it was, close enough to touch.
‘That book,’ the Abbot said through clenched teeth, ‘contains thirteen pages of outrageous, poisonous and twisted lies; lies which dare to contradict and pervert the very word of God as recorded and set down in our own true Bible.’
Athanasius stared down at the innocuous-looking cover. ‘Then why spare this copy?’ he asked. ‘If it’s so dangerous, why keep even one?’
‘Because,’ the Abbot replied, jabbing his finger at the box, ‘you can destroy books, but their contents have a way of surviving; and in order for us to confound and defeat our enemies it helps if we first know their minds. Let me show you something.’
He placed a finger on the edge of the cover and opened it. The pages inside were also made of slate, held by three leather thongs. As the Abbot turned them, Athanasius felt an overwhelming temptation to read what was scratched on their surfaces. Unfortunately the rate at which the Abbot was proceeding, coupled with the nebulizing quality of the red light, made it virtually impossible. He could see that each page contained two columns of dense script, but it was several moments before he realized they were written in Malan, the language of the first heretics. With his brain now attuned he managed to pick up just two fragments as the pages flipped over. Two fragments, two phrases – both of which added to his already considerable state of shock.
‘There,’ the Abbot announced as he reached the final page. ‘This is part of what equates to their version of Genesis. You are familiar with their bastard tongue, I believe.’
Athanasius hesitated, his mind still trembling with the forbidden words he had just read.
‘Yes,’ he managed to say without his voice betraying him. ‘I have … studied it.’
‘Then read,’ the Abbot said.
Unlike the previous pages, the final tablet of slate contained only eight lines of text. They were arranged as a Calligram forming the sign of the Tau – the same textual symbol Kathryn Mann had gazed upon two hours previously. This one, however, was complete.
The one true cross will appear on earth
All will see it in a single moment – all will wonder
The cross will fall
The cross will rise
To unlock the Sacrament
And bring forth a new age
Through its merciful death
Athanasius looked up at the Abbot, his mind racing.
‘This is why I brought you here,’ the Abbot said. ‘I wanted you to see with your own eyes how Brother Samuel’s death may be interpreted by our enemies.’
Athanasius studied the prophecy again. The first three lines read like a description of the extraordinary events of the morning; it was the last four that made the blood drain from his cheeks. What they suggested was something incredible, unbelievable, momentous.
‘This is why we kept the book,’ the Abbot said solemnly. ‘Knowledge is power; and knowing what our enemies believe gives us the advantage. I want you to keep a close and watchful eye on Brother Samuel’s body. For if these twisted words contain any truth, and he is the cross mentioned here, then he may yet rise up – and be seen by our enemies as a weapon to use against us.’
27
Reis and Arkadian stared down at the body. Criss-crossing the skin was a complex and elaborate network of livid white scars; some old, some more recent – all deliberate. In the macabre setting of the autopsy room they gave the impression that the monk was some kind of gothic monster, stitched together from the component parts of a number of men.
Reis restarted the recording.
‘The subject shows significant and uniform scarring over much of his body, the result of cuts made repeatedly by a sharp, clinical instrument such as a scalpel or a razor, possibly during some kind of ritual.’
He began the grisly inventory.
‘Starting at the head … An old, healed scar entirely circumscribing the neck where it connects with the torso. Similar scars circumscribe both arms at the shoulder and both legs at the groin. The one at the top of the upper left arm has been recently re-opened, but already shows signs of healing. This incision is also straight-edged and extremely neat, surgically precise even, from a highly sharpened blade.
‘Also on the left arm at the junction of the upper bicep and tricep is a T-shaped keloid scar, thicker than the others, caused by repeated heat trauma.’ He glanced across at Arkadian. ‘Looks like this boy’s been on the receiving end of a cattle brand.’
Arkadian stared at the raised ‘T’ on the monk’s upper arm, all thought of his other cases now forgotten. He picked up Reis’s camera. Its LCD screen displayed a miniature version of the monk lying on the autopsy table. With a press of a button it was transmitted wirelessly to the case file.
‘There’s another scar running along the top of the ribcage, and one bisecting it, down through the sternum to the navel.’ Reis paused. ‘In shape and size it resembles the Y-cut we make to remove major organs during a post-mortem.
‘Radiating from the areola of the left nipple are four straight lines arranged at right angles to form the shape of a cross. Also not recent, each is approximately …’ Reis produced his tape again ‘… twenty centimetres long.’ He took a closer look. ‘There’s another cross on the right side of the torso, level with the base of the ribcage; different from the rest; roughly thirteen centimetres laterally, like a Christian cross lying on its side; evidence of stretch marks on the skin surrounding it; must have happened a long time ago. It also hasn’t been subjected to ritualistic re-opening, so maybe it isn’t as significant as the others.’