Sanctus

Chapter 49

Liv nearly wept with relief as she stumbled through the revolving door into the merciful brightness of the terminal building. She limped on, trailing mud and rainwater in her wake, as fearful groups of tourists backed away from her. One of the cops by passport control looked up, alerted by the disturbance. She saw him nudge his partner and nod in her direction. The second recoiled as he locked eyes on the half-mud, half-mad creature heading towards him. He pressed a button on his walkie-talkie and started speaking into it. Both of them dropped their hands to hover near the trigger guards of their automatics.

Great. .

I make it all this way and now I’m going to be gunned down by these two bozos.

She dug deep into her scant reserves of strength and raised her trembling hands in the internationally recognized sign for surrender. ‘Please,’ she breathed, sinking to her knees in front of them. ‘Call Inspector Arkadian. Ruin City Homicide. I really need to talk to him.’

Rodriguez stood at the baggage check and watched the security guard empty the contents of his holdall on to the steel table and start going through it. An alert crackled through the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt, but he took no notice of it. The message called for back-up to deal with a woman in need of assistance. Rodriguez turned and looked back over the queue on the other side of the walk-through metal detector. His height gave him a clear view to the main concourse, but he couldn’t see the source of the disturbance.

‘Thank you, sir, have a nice flight.’ The guard pushed his canvas holdall to one side and reached for the next bag rattling down the rollers from the X-ray machine.

Rodriguez stepped aside and quickly repacked the passport he never thought he’d need again, the Bible his mother had died holding, the clothes that hung a little baggy on his slender, six-foot-five-inch frame. The last item he folded carefully, as if it were a flag to lay on a soldier’s coffin. It was a red nylon windcheater with a hood, meaningless to most but symbolically important to him.

He pulled the drawstring tight and picked up a small leather-bound volume, given to him by the Abbot, chronicling the history of the rides of the Tabula Rasa. He’d written a woman’s name and two addresses inside the cover. The first belonged to the offices of a newspaper in New Jersey. The second was residential.

He swung the bag over his shoulder and headed for the boarding gate. He didn’t look back. Whatever was going on in the terminal building wasn’t his concern. His mission lay elsewhere.