Triskellion 3: The Gathering (31 page)

“So the research on the children has been put on hold? I can live with that for now. But as for the rest of it, for her claims about the artefacts themselves … how do I know she isn’t bluffing?”

It was then that Laura had snatched the phone and spoken to the director herself. “You
don’t
know,” she’d said; “but can you afford to take that chance?”

“If you try to play me for a fool, you
do
know there will be consequences, don’t you?”

“I know,” Laura had said.

“Just get my Triskellions to me. And then we’ll see which of us is the
bigger
fool…”

The Gulfstream banked to the left, then straightened, and Laura watched the sun’s reflection slide up from the fuselage until the cockpit was bathed in golden light.

“So …
do
you know how to put them together?” Crow asked. “The Triskellions. Do you know what’s going to happen?”

Laura shrugged. “Not a clue, mate.”

Crow smiled and nodded – but it wasn’t long before the concern returned to his face. “We don’t really have any aces at all, do we?”

Laura thought for a few moments, shielding her eyes from the glare and fighting off the exhaustion, then nodded back towards the main cabin where the children were. “We’ve got
them
,” she said.

Rachel ran a finger across the Triskellion that was back hanging round her neck. She glanced across and saw that Adam was doing the same. It felt good to have them against their skin again; to be reunited with objects that were as much a part of them as bone and sinew.

Rachel felt re-energized: ready for the fight she knew was coming.

“I’ve always fancied a trip in a private jet,” Adam said. “I’d kind of hoped it would be under different circumstances, though, you know. Cocktails, and hot girls as cabin crew, and the latest movie on a big screen…”

From the seat facing Rachel, Gabriel smiled and raised his eyebrows. “We’ll see what we can do later on.”

“Cool,” Adam said, his eyes stupidly wide. “Can you maybe arrange it so I can ride up front with the captain too? I’ve always wanted to do that.”

Rachel reached across the aisle and took her brother’s hand. She knew exactly what he was doing; it had been the same ever since she could remember. Adam would play the fool whenever someone needed to. He would try to diffuse the tension or create a diversion when things were looking hopeless.

He could help them to stop being afraid.

Rachel remembered what Gabriel had said earlier about this being how it was meant to finish. “It’s funny,” she said. “That this is where it all finishes, I mean. We’ve been all over the world and we end up back in New York.”

Gabriel smiled. “Like I said; it’s how it was always meant to be. Sometimes you have to travel a long way from home to know where it is.”

“I hope it still feels like home when we get there,” Adam said.

Rachel took a few seconds to find the right words; to form the question she had been afraid to ask. “If you know what’s
meant
to happen,” she said, “does that mean you know what’s
going
to happen?”

Gabriel didn’t answer immediately. He turned to look out of the window and Rachel did the same. Far below they could just make out the line of the freeway and the thousands of vehicles that crawled eastwards along it: an artery clogged with dark fat. Gabriel pointed down towards it. “Unfortunately,” he said, “there are others being drawn to the same place we are.”

“Others?”

“Forces I have no control over.”

They settled into silence for a while, and Rachel, tiredness creeping across her like a blanket, was just drifting off to sleep when Crow’s voice came across the intercom.

“We’re starting our descent,” he said. “We’ll be on the ground in ten minutes.”

Rachel saw the same smile on Gabriel’s face that she had first seen more than two years before. It felt like a
million
years before, and a million miles away at a village cricket match.

“I know how I
want
things to turn out, obviously,” he said.

“I suppose a happy ending’s a bit much to ask for,” Adam said, looking from Rachel to Gabriel and back again. “You know, given how things have turned out so far.”

The jet began to descend quickly and Rachel’s stomach lurched. She closed her eyes. Happy ending or not, she thought, they would all know soon enough.

E
zekiel Crane stared out of the gondola past the steel girders of the bridge. Below him, seventy metres above the East River, he could see cars, nose to tail across the bridge, and hundreds more vehicles were gridlocked along Roosevelt Drive. Above and beyond the various towers and spires that made up the river front, the silver wings of the Flight Building were spreading into the sky, shining in the sunlight.

The Roosevelt Island Tram was an aerial lift that carried commuters into Manhattan. When the old Queensboro Bridge had become too rickety to accommodate foot passengers, the tram had become hugely popular and it still offered what many considered to be the best view of the city.

Crane’s followers had commandeered the tram, and now fifty or sixty of them surrounded him inside the gondola, eagerly anticipating their leader’s triumphant arrival in Central Park. Crane took in the skyscape of glittering mirrored towers and remembered the verse that had fired his imagination all those years ago:

He instantly recalled the smell of beeswax and dust in the library and the brooding atmosphere of the grand house in England where he had pored over the old books and documents on long afternoons.

Documents that had foretold of this day.

And he remembered a time years before that: the afternoon at the lake when he had overheard the story for the first time from the mouth of his own father. The revelation that had changed his life for ever.

He had once denied his fate – denied his connection to Rachel, Adam, Gabriel, and the ancient Travellers. But since then he had been reborn, not once but twice, and he had finally come to accept this link; to know what it was that made him special.

It was what marked him out for greatness and power.

“We’re descending, Pastor,” Brother Jedediah said. He wrung his hands, then pointed excitedly at the mass of Triple Wheelers assembled below them at the tram terminal.

“I can see that,” Crane said. “Make sure none of them touches me when we get out.”

The red and white gondola clanked into the terminus and the crowd of Triple Wheelers below gave a collective gasp as many of them saw their leader in the flesh for the first time. Crane stepped out onto the platform high above them and waved. Some reached out for him; others screamed, wept or spoke in tongues while he walked down the steel stairs, protected by his phalanx of bodyguards. He climbed into the open-topped stretch limo that was to take him the final kilometre into Central Park.

The sea of people parted and the car began its slow progress down 59th Street. They watched in awe as he went by.

The man who had promised them the world.

Stewart International Airport lay ninety-five kilometres north of Manhattan in the southern Hudson Valley. It had been developed in the 1930s as a military base, but had since grown into a major airport as well as being an emergency landing facility for the space shuttle.

It was also one of the many locations across the country where the Flight Trust housed its aircraft. As per the director’s orders, a helicopter had been standing by when the Gulfstream touched down, ready to transport Todd Crow and his precious cargo directly to the Flight Building.

“I can’t believe it’s never struck me before,” Rachel said. They were hurrying across the tarmac towards the chopper; its blades were whirring noisily and its headlights blazed in spite of the bright sunshine.

“What?” Adam asked.

She pointed towards the helicopter. “How much they look like bees. The way they hover and dip.” She blinked, remembering the attack helicopter that had almost killed them two years before. “The way they buzz and sting…”

“
Angry
bees,” Adam said.

Crow led Laura towards the front of the helicopter and clambered up into the pilot’s seat. He checked his instruments quickly, then turned to make sure that Rachel, Adam and Gabriel were safely on board.

Gabriel had stopped on the tarmac. Rachel and Adam ran back to him.

“I’m not coming with you,” he said.

“What?” Adam stared at Rachel, his eyes wide in disbelief.

“I’ll catch up with you. There’s somewhere else I need to go first.”

Rachel shook her head. “We can’t go in there without you. I don’t
want
to go in there without you.”

“You’re strong enough now, and you’ll be even stronger when you need to be.” He reached out towards the Triskellion that hung round Rachel’s neck, nodded towards the one round Adam’s. “Besides, you’ll be safe enough if you give me one of those.”

Rachel began to unfasten the leather thong.

“They’re less likely to kill us until they’ve got all three.” Adam was doing his best to sound casual, but the worry was clear enough in his eyes and in the slight tremble round his mouth. “That’s what you’re saying, right?”

Gabriel took the Triskellion from Rachel and hung it round his own neck. “That’s what I’m saying.”

Crow stuck his head out of the small window in the helicopter’s cockpit. “We should get going!” he shouted.

“Be careful,” Rachel said. She leaned forward to check the fastening on the Triskellion; to brush her fingers across the back of Gabriel’s neck.

He lunged forward suddenly and threw his arms round her. She wrapped her own round him in response, feeling his ribs through his thin shirt, his breath on her cheek. But before she could say anything, he had broken away and stepped across to embrace Adam.

Adam hugged him back and then stepped away and nodded a little awkwardly. Gabriel’s green eyes flashed behind the thick strands of black hair being blown across his face by the draft from the rotor blades.

The twins turned and ran to the chopper. Within a few seconds of shutting the door they were watching the ground drop away from them as the aircraft rose quickly into the air.

Laura smiled grimly at them from the cockpit. Next to her, Crow was pulling back on the joystick, pointing the helicopter south towards New York City.

“Should be fifteen minutes or so,” he said.

Rachel pressed her hand to the window and stared at the figure on the tarmac below them. The noise inside the helicopter was almost deafening, but Rachel heard Gabriel’s voice as clearly as if he were sitting next to her with his mouth pressed close to her ear.

You be careful too,
he said.
It’s a dangerous place
.

Gabriel was little more than a dark speck against the earth now.

Where?
she asked.

The belly of the beast.

E
zekiel Crane had never heard applause like it as he mounted the stage in Central Park. The clapping and the singing drowned out all other noises; it was so loud that even the clatter of the helicopter flying low over the park could not be heard.

Bands had been playing all day, filling the park with music, and the people who had gathered had danced and sung themselves into a frenzy. One of America’s greatest performers, a country and western legend and recent convert to the Triple Wheel, finished his song and welcomed his leader. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said; “Tick-Tock … the time is now. I would just like to take this opportunity to thank the man who has come to save us all. Without his vision I would be lost and in the wilderness. He has shown me, he has shown you, he has shown
all of us
the way. Amen. Ladies and Gentlemen, please show your appreciation for the Archminister and Founder of the Church of the Triple Wheel … Pastor … Ezekiel … Crane!”

Crane had saved a dazzling silver suit for the occasion, and the sunlight hit him, making him visible from far across the park. His hair and teeth were peroxide white and blown up to gigantic proportions on the screens on either side of the stage. He raised his arms and the cape that Jedediah had draped over his shoulders billowed behind him, making him look like he might be about to take off and fly.