Sanctus

Chapter 128

The scrape of the steel fuel can echoed through the warehouse as Kathryn dragged the last of them across the floor to where the white van was parked with its rear doors open. She was sweating from the strain and urgency of the work, and the muscles in her arms and legs burned with the effort, but she welcomed it. It helped distract her from the deeper pain she felt.

Gabriel jumped down from the van, grabbed the fuel can and hoisted it into the back to join the large pile they’d collected from around the warehouse: sacks of sugar; rolled-up blankets; stacks of polypropylene water pipes and plastic sheeting. anything that was explosive or flammable and would create lots of smoke when it burned. It was all packed neatly around a central stack of white nylon bags with KNO3 stencilled on the side. These contained potassium nitrate, the nitrogen-rich fertilizer that had been on its way to the Sudan. They were now going to serve the cause in a different way.

Gabriel pushed the last fuel can into place near the edge of the pile then looked back through the open doors at the haunted face of his mother. She looked exactly like she had after his father had been killed: grief mixed with anger and fear.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ he said.

She looked up at him. ‘Neither do you.’

He looked at her, and realized the pain in her eyes came not only from what had already happened, but from what still might. He jumped down. ‘We can’t just leave her,’ he said. ‘If the prophecy is right, and she is the cross, then she could change everything. But if we do nothing — then nothing will change, and all that has happened here will have been for nothing. And we’ll spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders, because they will torture her. They’ll torture her, discover everyone she’s spoken to, then they’ll kill her and come looking for us. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in hiding. We have to finish this now.’

She looked up at him with liquid black eyes. ‘First they took your father,’ she said. ‘Now they’ve taken mine.’ She reached out and laid her hand on his cheek. ‘I can’t let them take you.’

‘They won’t,’ he said, wiping a tear from her cheek with his thumb. ‘This isn’t a suicide mission. I became a soldier after Dad died so I could fight them in other ways. Academic arguments don’t change anything, and protests outside cathedrals don’t shake the walls.’ He glanced at the contents of the van. ‘But we will.’

Kathryn looked up at him. Saw his father standing there. Saw his grandfather. Saw herself there too. She knew it was pointless arguing with him. There was no time anyway.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Let’s do it.’

He leaned forward and kissed her gently on the forehead — long enough for it to count, not long enough for her to think it was goodbye. ‘OK,’ he said, reaching into the back of the van for the black canvas bag. ‘This is what you do.’