The Key

101

Gabriel had managed to cover twenty of the thirty kilometres towards the Dragonfields compound when the shamal hit. He had felt the wind steadily strengthening, battering the jeep with increasingly powerful gusts, but he had not been able to see the telltale mountain of dust until it swallowed the stars overhead, and the headlamps suddenly lit up a wall of sand moving along the riverbed to meet them.

Moments later it enveloped them with a soft hiss as millions of particles of dust began to scour the outside of the jeep. Liv sat up in her seat, responding to the sound and to the sudden electro-static charge in the air that made the fine hairs on their skin stand up and the air around them crackle.

‘It’s OK,’ Gabriel said, laying his hand on hers and experiencing a small electric shock as his skin made contact. ‘We’re nearly there.’

The hissing grew louder as the dust in the air thickened. Gabriel was having trouble seeing, the headlamps so smothered by dust that all they managed to do was create a ghostly glow in front of the jeep. He slowed his speed to little more than a crawl but still kept hitting the larger rocks he had previously been able to see and avoid. He checked the display on the sat-nav. The gentle curve of the wadi had turned them round and they were now heading in the wrong direction.

‘We’re going to have to stop,’ he said. ‘Keep a lookout and see if you can spot anywhere that might give us a bit of shelter. It won’t be for long, I promise: just until the worst of the storm passes.’

They carried on for a few hundred metres, picking their way through the blinding dust cloud, flinching every time another rock banged against the bumper or scraped along the underside of the car. Gabriel knew if they stopped out in the open then microscopic dust could find its way into the engine, and it might not start again. Even a little bit of cover would help minimize the damage. They continued to crawl along, listening to the wind outside and the shushing sound of the sand punctuated by the spatter of grit carried by the stronger gusts.

‘There!’ Liv pointed at a large, dark patch of riverbank slipping through the gritty fog outside her window. Gabriel threw the wheel round and steered towards it, the headlights shaking free of the dust’s grip long enough to reveal the smooth walls of a sizable cave. He eased the jeep into it, as far as he could manage before the ceiling sloped down, halting their progress. The back half of the jeep was still sticking out into the wadi, but the engine block was sheltered. It was as good as they were going to get. Gabriel cut the ignition so as not to flood the cave with exhaust fumes and switched off the headlights to save the jeep’s battery.

With the engine noise gone, the howl of the storm seemed louder. Liv reached into the back and felt around for the desert survival pack Washington had bequeathed them. Inside she found the small Maglite used for map reading and signalling and twisted it on. She kept on twisting until the whole of the top came off, turning the focused, directional beam into a softer, general light that lit everything like a lamp. ‘Come on,’ she said, pulling the drawstring tight on the pack and slipping it over her shoulder, ‘let’s go and see how deep this cave is. The air inside will be cleaner to breathe.’

Gabriel followed, marvelling at her spirit in the face of everything, and joined her in the main body of the cave. She linked her arm through his and they set off into the darkness.

Like many of the caves that honeycombed the soft rock beneath the desert, the one they had found was deceptively large. It twisted through channels cut by the steady flow of water when the land around had been rich and fertile. The further they moved, the quieter the howl of the storm became until it disappeared entirely and all they could hear was the crunch of their own footsteps and the echoing whisper of their breathing. It reminded Liv of the rushing sound the Sacrament made inside her, though she hadn’t heard it since they had left Baghdad. The rapturous lightness it brought had also gone and she feared what that might mean. So far she had avoided thinking about the implications of not fulfilling the prophecy, but now, with time so short and nature having turned against them, she had to face facts. The wording of the prophecy was clear: if they didn’t find Eden before daybreak, she was going to die.

Maybe she had been foolish to think that she alone could make a difference in the face of these immutable universal laws. She had always known she was going to die one day, just as she knew the world would end. Given enough time what once was green and living always ended up as dust. It was the way of things: everything had to die, everything had to end. Here was as good a place as any.

She stopped walking and her arm slipped from Gabriel’s as she sank to the floor and felt the smooth rock against the palms of her hands. Gabriel dropped down beside her. ‘Are you OK?’

She smiled at him. ‘I want to rest. There’s no point in going any further.’

Gabriel glanced over his shoulder at the cave. ‘I guess not.’ He slumped down beside her and fished out a thermal blanket from the survival kit. He spread it over her and bunched up the bag for her to rest her head upon.

She watched his face, pinched in concentration, and reached up to touch it. ‘I meant there’s no point in going any further on this trip. It’s over. Even if the storm ended now, we don’t know if we’re heading in the right direction or how far away it might be.’

‘It’s only ten more kilometres. The sat-nav will take us right there.’

‘Take us where though? To a place we’re only guessing might have something to do with any of this.’

He opened his mouth to say something then stopped and looked away. She could feel the disappointment and pain, radiating off him like heat. She understood that he would never give up. He had lost his entire family in the pursuit of fulfilling this prophetic sequence and felt the burden of his responsibility probably even more than she did, who carried the weight of the Sacrament inside her. Her one regret, if death came to claim her, was that she had not had the chance to spend more time in the company of this strong, sweet man. They had both lost so much in the brief time they had been together, and shared so much, that it was as if a whole extraordinary lifetime had been distilled into a few weeks. And now their time together was running out.

She sat up and took his face in her hands, turning it towards her and seeing the tears on his cheeks. She leaned forward and kissed them, tasting the salt of his sadness. Then she held his face in her hands and stared into his eyes. ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said. ‘You’ve done everything you could to try to bring me to safety; no one could have done more. And I’ve felt more secure with you these past couple of weeks, even with the constant threat of death hanging over me, than I have ever felt in my life before. You did that for me — and I will always love you for it.’

Then she leaned in close and kissed his mouth. The static crackled in the air all around them as he kissed her back, their hands pulling urgently at each other’s clothes in their hunger for each other, never once breaking the kiss for fear of what would follow.