The Key (23 page)

‘Welcome home,’ he said, too quiet for anyone but himself to hear. ‘Welcome home.’

Badiyat al-Sham

True dawn had started to show by the time the Ghost drew close enough to the cluster of lights to see what it was. He had worked his way into position using the contours of the land and the remains of the night to hide his approach. He was now lying on the upslope of a shallow berm and staring straight at the settlement through field glasses.

At first glance what he saw did not strike him as particularly remarkable. It appeared to be another of the thousands of oil drilling compounds that had spread like a contagion over large parts of the country since the end of the war. There was a thin drill tower in the centre, a collection of silver-sided buildings to house the workers, and a large transport hangar for vehicles and supplies. On the far side of the compound a flat, concreted area with a large painted ‘H’ showed where helicopters could land, though none were parked there at the moment.

Everything seemed normal – and yet there was something not right about it.

For a start, it wasn’t on an existing oilfield. There were no other drilling operations for at least a hundred kilometres in any direction and the whole place was too clean. Exploratory drilling gear got moved around from site to site and usually bore the scars of oil grime and years of standing out in various godforsaken places being blasted by extremes of weather. The equipment here all shone with newness, as if everything had been shipped straight from the factory, taken out of its packaging and dropped into the desert like a theme-park version of a drill site. It was clearly operational, the drill was turning but there was no oil in either of the holding lagoons.

He remembered a government outfit seven or eight years back sinking a few wells out here. They moved on pretty quickly when they came up dry. All of this would be on record and it seemed unlikely that one company would now succeed where another had failed; especially with all the technology they used to sniff out oil these days. Down to a certain level you could pretty much see what was there using seismic readings, and beyond that it was too expensive to drill anyway.

The thing that really aroused his suspicions was the level of security. Iraq was still a dangerous place and any Western corporation had to have some protection, if only to dissuade opportunistic insurgents from kidnapping their employees and charging exorbitant ransoms. But the security levels at this place were off the scale. Two layers of razor wire formed a perimeter around the entire compound with two steel gates barring the only road in. There were guard towers positioned at the four corners, each with a shooting platform at the top and a gun visible through the slits in the side panels. They were M60 Mk43s, the US Army’s heavy machine gun of choice. With an effective range of around a thousand metres and a fire rate of six hundred rounds a minute they were easily capable of stopping any approaching vehicle, even an armour-plated one, long before it reached the main gate. What they could do to a man was unthinkable. It didn’t make sense that such heavy artillery was being used to protect what looked from the outside to be nothing more than a dry well. There had to be something else he was missing, something valuable enough to warrant this small, lethally equipped army.

The Ghost dropped down and moved in closer. Wary of the men in the towers casually scanning the land with their hands resting on their heavy guns, he went as far as he dared then crept back into an observation position.

He could hear noises now, drifting over from the compound: the clank of the turning drill; the hum of motors and air-conditioning units; voices speaking a mixture of Arabic and English.

A bunch of men in white overalls emerged from the main building and headed over to the drill where others were waiting to be relieved. Up in the towers the guard details changed too, staggered by a few minutes each time to ensure the compound was not left vulnerable by a simultaneous changeover. It was all very slick and professional, and all the more strange because of it.

The Ghost continued to watch, slowly building up an operational picture of the place. The sun would be up soon and he would have to slip away or risk being seen. He was about to switch position when the sound of diesel engines punctured the low-level operational hum of the place, and three jeeps emerged from the transport bay. They pulled up in front of the main building and waited.

More men emerged from the building and climbed into the vehicles. The men in front wore the same white overalls as the drill workers and carried an assortment of picks and spades. Those at the rear wore the desert camouflage of the tower guards and the jeep they climbed into had a flatbed at the rear and a roof-mounted M60. It was standard convoy protocol, expendable scouts in the front, security at the rear, VIPs in the middle. It was this group that the Ghost now focused on.

There were three of them, two Westerners and one Iraqi, dressed in a mixture of khaki and sand-coloured clothes that hung off their well-stuffed, out-of-condition bodies. Two of them had beards and long hair poking from beneath salt-stained sun hats. They were obviously civilians, and by the way they were carrying themselves and talking to the drivers, they were obviously in charge. The Iraqi seemed to be in overall command and there was something about him that seemed familiar, though the distance, combined with his beard, made it hard to get a proper look at his face. Then another man stepped out from the shadow of the building and a big piece of the jigsaw fell into place. He walked up to the leader of the group, spoke to him for a few moments, checked his watch and waved to the tower by the main gate.

The first of the two steel barriers rolled back and the convoy moved off, stopping in the no-man’s land between the two rows of razor wire until the first gate was fully shut. Only then did the second slide open to release them back up the dirt track the Ghost had followed here. The man in the compound watched them leave then scanned the surrounding terrain. He paused as he looked at the Ghost’s position and for a moment the two men seemed to stare at each other, though the Ghost knew he could not be seen. Then Hyde turned and walked away, disappearing into the shiny shell of the main compound building.

Newark, New Jersey

The first thing Liv saw when they turned into her street was the incident tape flapping in the road ahead. The wind that came off the river had torn it away at one end and was whipping it from side to side like a black-and-yellow snake. Ski pulled up to the kerb, trapping it beneath the wheels of the cruiser, then cut the engine. In the sudden silence the tape chattered against the underside of the car.

‘We think the same guy who did the two homicides also did this,’ Ski said. ‘Good job you weren’t home, huh?’

Liv didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She had been so desperate to come home to try to make sense of everything, but now she had finally got here all she found was more chaos and destruction.

Her home was gone.

The white clapboard sides of the building were scorched above every boarded window and the glass that had filled them lay in glittering drifts on the ground. She popped the car door and stepped out into the freezing wind. She could still smell ash and charred wood in the air. Ski got out and joined her on the sidewalk.

‘What happened to the Da Costas?’ she asked, nodding at the cracked windows on the first floor.

‘They’re OK. They were at work when it happened. Fire started around three in the afternoon. The building’s been condemned. Everyone’s staying with family or friends, waiting for the insurance to kick in.’

Another piece of incident tape stretched across a plank of rough plywood that had been nailed in place where her door had been. It also snaked along the fence enclosing the tiny square of garden that had made her want the apartment in the first place.

When she’d moved in, the yard had been covered in concrete stained with oil from the previous owner’s Harley. She’d broken it all up herself, exposing the soil beneath and planting it with native seeds and shrubs, returning it to how it might have looked when man had first settled here. She had often laid on the patch of grass at the centre of her tiny garden, staring up at the sky – the ivy strategically blocking the view of one wall, the branches of the cherry tree the other – imagining she was lying in a long-ago forest, far away from her modern-day troubles.

Her apartment had been full of plants too, a remnant of growing up with an organic horticulturalist father who’d taught her to name all the plants at the same time as she’d learned her A-B-Cs. He’d always thought it weird that she’d ended up working as a big-city journalist, living in a concrete jungle when she had the earth in her soul. Maybe it had been her way of rebelling. Maybe she was just nosy. Either way, her apartment, with her plants and her flowers and the rich smell of earth and oxygen, was her sanctuary – her home.

And now someone had taken it all from her. She walked over and pulled some tape away, stepping through a broken gap in the fence and into her ruined garden.

Blackened pieces of furniture had been thrown in a large pile in the centre: a splintered table she had inherited when her dad died, some stubs of burned books, a mattress with a fitted sheet still clinging to it, and a few framed photographs, smoke-damaged but visible. She picked one up: it showed a vibrantly happy version of herself in a rowing boat on the lake in Central Park. Next to her was Samuel. For a moment she felt a rush of fury at him for bringing all this destruction upon her and leaving her alone in the world among the charred remains of her former life. But she was too tired to hold on to it for long. She was too tired to do anything and would have laid down right there in the mud had Ski not pulled her into a rough but well-meaning hug. She sobbed into his meaty shoulder, feeling wretched and alone, breathing in the comforting cop-car smell of him.

‘Come on,’ he said, stroking her back awkwardly, ‘let it all go. You got someplace to go, someone you can call, ’cept me?’ She shook her head. He held on and let her ride it out, working out what he might say that would make it better. Ski was no good at small talk at the best of times and this was far from that.

‘I’d let you crash at my place,’ he offered, ‘but to be honest my ma would drive you nuts with all her questions. She’s seen you on the news. You’d be like a celebrity. She’d probably invite her friends round and everything. Come on, let’s get in the car. It’s freezing out here. Crying ain’t going to bring none of this stuff back. Let me see if I can’t fix you up with something.’

Four in the morning in Newark, New Jersey.

Ten in the morning in Vatican City.

Reports of an earthquake had filtered through on the international news channels late the previous evening, along with rumours that some of the Citadel survivors had become casualties. Clementi had spent the evening and most of the night checking his secure communications, waiting for word, eager for confirmation that the threat to his enterprise had been removed. In the end exhaustion had driven him to bed with the question unanswered.

As soon as he had dispensed with his morning prayers and duties he had rushed to his office and logged in.

There were two messages waiting for him.

He read the first with a growing sense of unease. Despite his promise to the Group, only one of the four survivors had been silenced during the night. Of the other three, one was under surveillance but still at liberty in America, and the other two were missing. It had been a messy night. Two of the independent agents who had been watching the hospital were among the dead. He opened a picture attachment and winced at a crime-scene photograph showing the priest, wide-eyed in surprise and lying on a hospital bed with his throat cut and his blood pooling around him. The first news reports had wrongly identified him as the monk, but subsequent bulletins had corrected this. The monk was now officially missing, along with Liv Adamsen and Gabriel Mann, the one survivor the Group had seemed particularly concerned about.

He closed the first email and clicked the second, time-stamped several hours after the first, hoping for better news. It had been sent by the third agent and gave a detailed report of the surveillance of the missing woman. Clementi scanned through the details of what flight she had taken and how she had been met by a policeman upon landing. The message also contained a photo attachment under an explanatory note.

The subject was seen reading this book throughout the flight …

He clicked it open and caught his breath when he saw the tablet, one of the few extant examples of the lost language not in the possession of the Citadel. The girl had underlined a line of symbols and written something next to it which made his skin go cold.

The key?

She had correctly translated a language only he, and a very few people in the world, could read and one that was central to his desire to restore the Church. He focused on her question mark. Did it mean that the translation was a guess, or that its significance was unknown? Then he saw what else she had underlined on the page and his mind was made up. It was Al-Hillah – the key to everything. She had to know something, and that made her very dangerous indeed.

The time for caution was gone. Yesterday he had agonized over his decision, now he didn’t hesitate. He was much too far in to turn back.

Opening a new window, he typed a short reply:

Silence the girl immediately.

I expect to hear from you within the hour.

Newark, New Jersey

‘This is you.’ Ski pushed open the door with a flourish the hotel room beyond did not deserve.

It was stark and functional and not much bigger than the double bed it contained. A feeble amount of dawn light leaked in from a single window opposite and beyond was a prime view of a solid brick wall.

‘It’s perfect,’ Liv said, stepping across the threshold.

Ski stayed outside in the corridor like a nervous date, digging around in his jacket pocket for something. ‘Here,’ he said, holding out a cheap-looking cell phone. ‘It’s got about fifty bucks’ credit on it. You need to call anyone, use that. It’s virtually untraceable.’ Liv took it gratefully. ‘I’ve put my number on there, in case you need to contact me in a hurry. You just take it easy for a while, OK?’ He nodded, as if answering his own question, then turned and was gone. Ski wasn’t one for big shows of emotion, but he had a huge heart, and that counted for more than anything.