Читать книгу Sanctus and The Key: 2 Bestselling Thrillers - Simon Toyne, Simon Toyne - Страница 55

A heavy door shrieked open on rusty hinges. Cornelius stepped through it and reached for the burning torch that had been left for them. He held it in front of him as they made their way into the forgotten depths of the Citadel. Brother Johann at his shoulder, his dark matinee-idol looks belying a Scandinavian ancestry, his blue eyes full of the ice of his homeland. Brother Rodriguez brought up the rear, towering a foot above them both, his slender height at odds with his urban Hispanic roots, his golden eyes watchful and blank as he loped through the low tunnels.

The crunch of their footfalls and the crackle of the burning flambeaux echoed around them as the mountain’s history rose out of the dark to greet them. Doorways yawned here and there like mouths frozen in mourning. Beyond them they glimpsed remnants of the lives once lived here: beds sagging under the weight of water-logged straw and splintered benches that could hardly bear the weight of the ghosts who now sat upon them. From time to time crumbled stone littered the pathway and streaks of limescale flared white in the darkness like the passing phantoms of those who had once walked there.

Ten minutes later they saw a faint orange light ahead, flickering from a doorway that dribbled smoke across a ceiling carved in a time when people were smaller. They smelt burning wood as they got nearer and felt the cold air give way to a little warmth. Cornelius pushed through into a cave that might once have been a kitchen. On the far side of the chamber a figure squatted by an old-fashioned range, poking with a stick at a struggling fire.

‘Greetings, Brothers,’ the Abbot said, like an innkeeper welcoming travellers in from a blizzard. ‘My apologies; this is a poor excuse for a fire. I’m afraid I seem to have lost the art of it. Please …’ He gestured towards a table set with two large loaves and some fruit. ‘Sit. Eat.’

The Abbot joined them at the table, watched them break bread in silence, taking none for himself. He scrutinized them as they ate, putting names to faces he had last seen in their personnel files. The tall one: Guillermo Rodriguez. Twenty-two years old. Originally from the Bronx. Former street rat and gang member. His records showed a string of arrests for arson, with stiffer sentences handed down each time. Spent half his life with a drug-addicted mother and the rest in a succession of juvenile detention centres. Found God after AIDS made him an orphan.

Opposite him sat Johann Larsson. Twenty-four. Dark haired, blue eyed and strikingly handsome. Born in the Abisko forests of northern Sweden into a separatist, pseudo-military religious commune he had been raised in the belief that the end was close, when the sinful millions would become devils and turn on the righteous. In order to protect himself and his extended ‘family’ from these imagined hordes he had learned how to use a gun at the same time as his A-B-C’s. The end, when it did come, took a more tragic form. A lorry driver first raised the alarm when he spotted a timber wolf dragging a human leg across the road in front of him. The police unit that was dispatched discovered that the commune had been wiped out by a suicide pact. Johann was the only survivor. They found him curled up on a bed next to the corpse of his younger brother. He told the police his father had given him some pills to ‘let him see God’, but he’d been angry with him because he’d shouted at his brother, so had thrown them away. A succession of foster families failed to touch this beautiful, troubled boy. He was withdrawn, violently distrustful of strangers and clearly on the path to self-destruction. Then the church stepped in, sent him to one of their rehabilitation seminaries in America, and took him on as a lost son.

Then there was Cornelius Webster. Thirty-four. Grew up in an orphanage and went straight into the British Army as soon as he was old enough. Invalided out after watching his platoon burn alive in front of him when their armoured vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. The scars on his face, like drops of pale wax that made his beard grow in patches, were the badges of this tragedy. The day he left the army he’d swapped the institutionalized life of a soldier for the institutionalized life of a monk. The Citadel was his family now, as it was to all of them.

The Abbot also matched their various skills to the mission he was about to give them: Cornelius with his age and authority; Johann with his distracting looks and perfect English, bait to catch a female fish; Rodriguez with his US passport and knowledge of the streets. Each had violence in their past and a sharp and zealous desire to prove themselves to God. He waited until they’d finished eating before speaking again.

‘Please forgive the unorthodox nature of this meeting,’ he said, the fire now framing him in a hazy red glow. ‘But when I explain the reason, you will understand the need for such caution and secrecy.’

He tapped a finger against his pursed lips.

‘This section of the mountain once housed a garrison of warrior monks, the Carmina, the red knights of the Citadel, the illustrious forebears of the guild you serve. They rode forth to root out false religions, crush false gods, destroy heretical churches, and purge misguided worshippers of their sins in the purifying fires of the Inquisition. These crusades were known as the Tabula Rasa – the Clean Slate – for no trace of heresy was ever left in their wake.’

He lowered his voice and leaned forward against the table, making it creak like the timbers of an ancient ship.

‘The Carmina were not bound by the ordinary laws of man.’ He regarded each of them individually. ‘Nor by the laws of whatever land they found themselves in; for those were but the laws of kings and emperors, and the Carmina answered only to God. I bring you here now to resume their sacred mantle. We may no longer find ourselves besieged by armies, but we still have enemies. And we still have need of soldiers.’

He slid an envelope across the table to Cornelius.

‘Here are details of what you must do and instructions as to how you can leave the mountain. I have chosen you because you each have within you the character and past experience to do God’s work. Be guided by Him and not by earthly laws. Like your predecessors you must be single-minded in the performance of your duty. The threat is real. You must eliminate it.’

He pointed to the far side of the room where three identical canvas bags were propped against the wall.

‘Inside those you will find currency, identification documents and civilian clothing. You will be met outside the walls of the old town two hours after midnight by two men who will provide transport, weapons and whatever else you need. Just as your forebears used mercenaries to assist them in their missions, you must use these men to help you in yours. But never forget that what you are doing for the love of God, they are doing for the love of money. So use them – but do not trust them.’

He paused.

‘It is not lightly that I send you on this mission. Should you fall in your duty, as some of you might, then know you will be embraced by God as a blessed warrior, as those who fell before you. Those who do return will be welcomed back, not as members of the guild of guards you currently serve, but as the highest of our kind – a green cloak, a Sanctus. You may be aware,’ he added, ‘that there are already two vacancies. But I would expand our number to accommodate all of you who prove so worthy. And in rising to the highest level of our brotherhood you would, of course, be blessed with the sacred knowledge of that which I now ask you to protect.’

He rose from his seat and removed his Crux from his rope belt. ‘You have a few hours in which to change and prepare for your return to the world. I will bless you now in the tradition of the order we revive here tonight.’

He raised the Tau above his head and began uttering the ancient blessing of war, in words as ancient as the mountain they now prayed in, and behind him the fire crackled and hissed, and threw his huge shadow across the ceiling of the cave.

Some hours later, a light tremor shook the ground by the old city wall, an echo of the storm flickering its way over the mountain peaks to the north. At the end of an alley between two multi-storey car parks, a heavy steel shutter rumbled upwards to reveal a gap just wide enough for a man to pass through. Three shadows peeled themselves away from the darkness, pieces of night dispersed by the wind. They headed down the alley towards a parked van with its rear doors unlocked.

The first fat spots of rain pinged down on the thin steel roof of the van and cracked against the bone-coloured flagstones as the three figures slipped inside. The doors clanged shut and the engine growled into life. The headlights flicked on, sweeping the dusty road as rain erupted across it like a contagion.

The van moved off, heading for the inner ring-road and the great eastern boulevard that would take them all the way to the airport. The rain intensified as they circled the old town, black tears weeping for all that had happened and all that might, running down the sides of the Citadel, down to the chalky earth where a moat once flowed and a man once swam, down narrow cobbled streets where red knights had ridden, to wash away the flowers and cards marking the spot where the monk had so recently fallen.