Simon Toyne - The Key

As a scholar, Athanasius had come across legends such as these; wild tales of trees that produced magical fruit and underground grottoes filled with vast hoards of gold. He had never seriously considered them to be anything other than allegorical or the fanciful imaginings of ancient storytellers. But, whatever his own thoughts, it was clear that the Cardinal Secretary of State in Rome believed them.

A light flickered on as he stepped into the washroom revealing a row of stone sinks facing a line of stalls. He stepped across to the furthest one and closed the door behind him.

The cubicle was little more than a square stall with a hole cut in the stone floor that led directly to the sewer. To one side was a bucket of water with a wooden cup floating in it that was used as a rudimentary flushing mechanism. There was no lock on the door, so Athanasius leaned against it and took the phone Gabriel had given him from his pocket. It lit up the dim cubicle the moment he touched the screen. He stared down at it, trying to remember the lesson he’d had on how to compose a message. He managed to call up a test message sent from Gabriel, hit the ‘Reply’ option then carefully transcribed a summary of everything he had discovered, working quickly, aware that the longer he was gone the more suspicion it would arouse, then he tapped the send button.

A small box opened up in the middle of the screen: ‘Cannot Send Mail.’

He tried again and got the same message.

Outside, the door opened and someone walked to the sink and started filling it. He slipped the phone in his pocket, mindful of the light it gave off, and poured a cup of water into the hole before opening the door.

Father Thomas was splashing water on to his face when he emerged. Athanasius seized the moment and thrust the phone at him. ‘It’s not working,’ he said, glancing nervously at the door.

Thomas took the phone and read the error message. ‘There’s no signal,’ he said. ‘We’re too deep in the mountain.’

Athanasius felt instantly deflated. He was trapped in quarantine, for the next few days at least, in a location he had specified, buried deep beneath solid rock. He needed to get out somehow, or the information he had found would be useless.

Thomas held out the phone and Athanasius reached out to take it from him when the door behind them flew open.

Axel stood in the doorway. For a moment he stood looking at them both, his eyes switching from one to the other, seemingly oblivious to the glowing device being passed between them.

Then they saw the fresh blood dripping from his nose, just as his face crumpled in anguish and he fell to his knees, his hands already clawing violently at the flesh beneath his red cassock.

‘Help me,’ he said, through ragged, mournful sobs. ‘Please, somebody, help me…’

It took Liv and Gabriel eight precious hours to reach the Turkish-Iraqi border on roads that became increasingly worse. They knew they were getting close when they came to the first military checkpoint. Gabriel did all the talking and they were quickly waved on. The checkpoint was manned by Turkish soldiers, he explained as they drove away, and their primary concern was the PKK — Kurdish freedom fighters — not Western fugitives; the border would be a different story. He handed her a maroon British passport with a picture of a blonde girl in the back that looked a bit like Liv if you squinted.

‘I borrowed it from one of the volunteers,’ he said, watching the checkpoint disappear in his rear-view mirror. ‘The border police never look too closely. They take photocopies for their files and I’ve already done some with the contrast whacked right up so you can hardly make out the picture anyway.’ He reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. ‘We’ll be fine. I promise.’

Fifteen minutes later they crested a hill and saw the border crossing at Silopi, built on the side of a muddy river. It was little more than a delta-shaped concrete car park that ended abruptly at the river’s edge. Liv’s first reaction when she saw it was that she was going to die there. A road bridge extended from the centre of it, spanning the river and joining another complex of squat buildings on the Iraqi side: one bridge, one road, and literally thousands of trucks waiting to use it. They were parked in rows by the border-patrol buildings and in makeshift car parks on either side of the main road that snaked away through the dry land, choked with a solid, unmoving line of more traffic. If they had to wait in line it would take days to get into Iraq, days that they didn’t have.

‘Don’t worry,’ Gabriel said, reading her mood. ‘That’s the queue for road freight. We’re going to join the one over there.’ He pointed to a clear strip of road close to the bridge where a US Army Humvee was speeding towards a line of waiting taxis. It left the road, kicking up dust as it skirted around the parked cars and barely paused at the barrier before picking up speed again to cross the bridge into Iraq. On the far side of the river were more military vehicles and men with M4 assault rifles slung across their chests. They stood in the shade of a small arch that spanned the road. Above them was a sign written in Arabic with an English translation beneath saying ‘Welcome to Iraqi Kurdistan Region’.

‘We’ll be on our way in no time,’ he said. ‘Trust me, I’ve done it many times before.’

Liv wasn’t convinced. ‘Have you ever done it with half the Turkish police force after you?’

He smiled and handed her a passport. ‘They’re not looking for me, they’re looking for someone called Gabriel Mann.’

She opened the passport and saw his face staring back with someone else’s name beneath it.

‘Who’s David Kinsella?’

‘I am, when I need to be — all part of my glamorous existence as a charity worker. I got fed up with being thrown out of various countries for trying to help people the government were busy persecuting. Unfortunately, the deck is stacked heavily in favour of any regime who want to keep you out. All they have to do is stick your name on a list of undesirables and all normal methods of entry cease to work. So I got a little creative and stopped playing by the rules. Believe me, getting out of Turkey won’t be a problem; it’s what happens when we get into Iraq that worries me more.’

They drove along the road past the wall of lorries and parked next to the local taxis.

‘This is where we might get held up a little,’ Gabriel said, nodding towards the taxi drivers. ‘They make a good living out of guiding tourists and travellers through all the red tape and don’t take kindly to free agents who don’t need them. We could plead with them, see if they’ll let us queue jump, but I doubt any will, and we don’t really want to cause a scene and draw attention to ourselves.’

Liv studied the line of taxi drivers and their passengers. There were around fifteen of them, all looking as if they were on a leisurely Sunday outing. Some were talking to the border guards, some were eating; most were smoking; a small group was even playing cards, but none of them seemed in a particular hurry.

‘How do we know how many people are in front of us?’

Gabriel pointed at a blackboard with a number 12 chalked on it. ‘You get a chit from the desk and wait until they chalk your number up.’

A wave of heat flooded the interior as he got out of the car and headed across to a uniformed man sitting behind a scratched Perspex window to get a number. Liv stared out of the window, jogging her leg up and down with tension. They couldn’t afford to hang around here waiting patiently in line. Time was too short. They had to get to the front somehow, even if she had to kiss every driver to do it. She surveyed the level of male beauty on display. Stained shirts, vests and hairy shoulders. Maybe she’d try a different approach. She popped open her door, stepped out into the dry heat and headed over to join Gabriel.