The Key

104

Dick wavered where he stood, his right eye a mass of broken blood vessels from where the bullet had entered his temple and blown apart everything behind it. He stood like that for a moment, as if an invisible thread held him suspended from the ceiling, then he started to fall. Gabriel rolled away just before he hit the ground. Over by Liv, the fedai was still pointing his pistol at the spot where Dick had stood. He tucked it into his holster and held out his hand to help Liv up. ‘Quickly,’ he said. ‘We must go quickly before the others come.’ His voice scraped across the air — like stones being rubbed together.

Gabriel moved to get up, swept Washington’s Glock from the giant’s dead hand and pointed it at the Ghost. ‘Get away from her.’

The strange insect eyes of the sand goggles angled down towards the gun. ‘You have to trust me.’ That voice again.

‘Like John Mann trusted you?’

The Ghost shook his head slowly. ‘Whatever you think happened. Whatever you think I did. You are wrong.’

‘Tell me then. Tell me what happened. And if I believe any of it I might not shoot you where you stand.’

The Ghost looked over at the tunnel leading to the cave entrance. ‘We really should hurry.’

Another gunshot boomed in the cave and shards of rock pattered down from the spot above the Ghost’s head where the bullet had hit. ‘Next one’s your leg,’ Gabriel hissed through his teeth. ‘Tell me what happened.’

The Ghost nodded and in his eerie voice he started to talk.

‘I was in the main chamber when the helicopter came. We had unearthed part of the lost library of Ashurbanipal, looted and hidden when Babylon fell. It was filled with treasures — the Mirror Prophecy was only part of it. There were accounts dating back to creation and books of spells passed down from when the gods walked the earth.

‘We tried to keep our discovery a secret, knowing the danger if the Citadel found out, but there was a spy in the camp. Soldiers came dressed as Iraqi army but they looked wrong; they had no proper markings on their uniforms and the helicopter they flew in on was Russian — a huge Sikorsky gunship.’

Gabriel remembered the strange testimony of Zaid Aziz. He was familiar with these huge helicopters from his time in Afghanistan, left over from the Russian occupation. Everyone referred to them as Sea Dragons.

‘They rounded everyone up, accused us of spying and made us pack all the relics into crates. They had guns and numbers so we did what they said. But once everything had been loaded into the helicopter they started shooting anyway. We heard the slaughter down in the main dig chamber, but by then they had already tied our hands behind our backs and were discussing what they were going to do to us. In the end they strung us up by our necks from one of the ceiling beams and rolled grenades in after us. The explosion actually saved my life. It released the rope from around my neck, though not before it had done this to my voice.

‘When I came to, I was in darkness. I dug my way out to discover that everyone was dead. I salvaged what I could, including the camera containing the picture I sent to your grandfather. I was searching for water, but they’d taken it all. If I hadn’t been found by desert scavengers, drawn by the smoke, I would have died. They looked after me and tended to my wounds. The woman who nursed me called me the Ghost because I had been dead and she had brought me back to life.’

‘So why, if the Citadel sent men to kill you, have you been selling relics to them for years?’

‘It suited me to keep them close and let them think I was their friend. It allowed me to stay in the desert and keep looking for what had been lost. I only ever sold them things that were not useful.’

Gabriel shook his head and levelled the gun at the Ghost’s head. ‘I don’t believe you. I think you are working for them now, just as you were back then.’

‘No,’ the Ghost began to unwrap the keffiyeh from his face. ‘The Citadel is my enemy, and always has been. And I did not betray your father, nor did I cause his death.’ He removed the sand goggles from his face to reveal that he was telling the truth. The Ghost could not have betrayed Gabriel’s father — the Ghost was Gabriel’s father.

Gabriel stared. Shocked. Disbelieving.

‘I’m sorry,’ John Mann said, his shattered voice stretched thin with emotion. ‘The Citadel killed us all to keep what we’d discovered a secret. They thought I was dead. If I’d returned home they would have come again, and this time they would have killed Kathryn and you, just in case. But as long as they believed the knowledge had died with me, you were safe: I stayed dead so that you might live.’

Gabriel shook his head and felt the old anger rising up. ‘But we could have stayed together and hidden away as a family.’

‘And what kind of life would that have been? Always looking over our shoulders, always wary of talking to anyone in case we gave something away?’

‘Better than a life of not knowing. You were alive all this time and we never even knew. My mother died — did you know that?’

John Mann nodded. ‘You cannot imagine the pain I have felt at not spending my life with Kathryn. But it was only my love for her that kept me away. One day I hope you will understand this.’

Outside, muffled gunfire rattled the night.

‘Now we really need to get going. We have only a few hours left before dawn and it’ll take us at least forty minutes to get there.’

‘Get where?’

‘You’ve read the Mirror Prophecy. You know what’s at stake. We need to get you to the ancient site of Eden before the sun rises. And I think I know where it is.’