The Key

53

Four in the morning in Newark, New Jersey.

Ten in the morning in Vatican City.

Reports of an earthquake had filtered through on the international news channels late the previous evening, along with rumours that some of the Citadel survivors had become casualties. Clementi had spent the evening and most of the night checking his secure communications, waiting for word, eager for confirmation that the threat to his enterprise had been removed. In the end exhaustion had driven him to bed with the question unanswered.

As soon as he had dispensed with his morning prayers and duties he had rushed to his office and logged in.

There were two messages waiting for him.

He read the first with a growing sense of unease. Despite his promise to the Group, only one of the four survivors had been silenced during the night. Of the other three, one was under surveillance but still at liberty in America, and the other two were missing. It had been a messy night. Two of the independent agents who had been watching the hospital were among the dead. He opened a picture attachment and winced at a crime-scene photograph showing the priest, wide-eyed in surprise and lying on a hospital bed with his throat cut and his blood pooling around him. The first news reports had wrongly identified him as the monk, but subsequent bulletins had corrected this. The monk was now officially missing, along with Liv Adamsen and Gabriel Mann, the one survivor the Group had seemed particularly concerned about.

He closed the first email and clicked the second, time-stamped several hours after the first, hoping for better news. It had been sent by the third agent and gave a detailed report of the surveillance of the missing woman. Clementi scanned through the details of what flight she had taken and how she had been met by a policeman upon landing. The message also contained a photo attachment under an explanatory note. The subject was seen reading this book throughout the flight…

He clicked it open and caught his breath when he saw the tablet, one of the few extant examples of the lost language not in the possession of the Citadel. The girl had underlined a line of symbols and written something next to it which made his skin go cold.

The key?

She had correctly translated a language only he, and a very few people in the world, could read and one that was central to his desire to restore the Church. He focused on her question mark. Did it mean that the translation was a guess, or that its significance was unknown? Then he saw what else she had underlined on the page and his mind was made up. It was Al-Hillah — the key to everything. She had to know something, and that made her very dangerous indeed.

The time for caution was gone. Yesterday he had agonized over his decision, now he didn’t hesitate. He was much too far in to turn back.

Opening a new window, he typed a short reply: Silence the girl immediately. I expect to hear from you within the hour.