Simon Toyne - Bestselling Conspiracy Thriller Trilogy - Sanctus, The Key, The Tower

Then she saw him.

Arms outstretched. Head tilted down.

It was an image she’d been familiar with all her life, only carved in stone and standing on top of a different mountain halfway across the world. She had been schooled in what it meant from childhood. Now, after generations of collective, proactive struggle attempting to kick-start the chain of events that would change mankind’s destiny, here it was, unfolding right in front of her, the result of one man acting alone. As she tried to steady her shaking hand she heard the newsreader running through the headlines.

‘In the next half-hour we’ll have more from the world summit on climate change; the latest round-up of the world money markets; and we reveal how the ancient fortress in the city of Ruin has finally been conquered this morning – after these messages …’

Kathryn took one last look at the extraordinary vision then dipped back through the skylight to find out what the rest of the world was going to make of it.

A slick car commercial was playing as Kathryn settled into an ancient sofa and glanced at the time signal on the TV screen. Eight twenty-eight; four twenty-eight in the morning in Rio. She pressed a speed-dial button and listened to the rapid beeps racing through a number with many digits, watching the commercial play out until, somewhere in the dark on the other side of the world, someone picked up.

‘¿ Ola ?’ A woman’s voice answered, quiet but alert. It was not, she noted with relief, the voice of someone who had just been woken up.

‘Mariella, it’s Kathryn. Sorry for calling so late … or early. I thought he might be awake.’

She knew that her father kept increasingly strange hours.

‘ Sim, Senhora, ’ Mariella replied. ‘He has been for a while. I lit a fire in the study. There is a chill tonight. I left him reading.’

‘Could I talk to him please?’

‘ Certamente, ’ Mariella said.

The swishing of a skirt and the sounds of soft footsteps filtered down the line and Kathryn pictured her father’s housekeeper walking down the dark, parquet-floored hallway towards the soft glow of firelight spilling from the study at the far end of the modest house. The footsteps stopped and she heard a short muffled conversation in Portuguese before the phone was handed over.

‘Kathryn …’ Her father’s warm voice drifted across the continents, calming her instantly. She could tell by his tone that he was smiling.

‘Daddy …’ She smiled too, despite the weight of the news she carried.

‘And how is the weather in Ruin this morning?’

‘Sunny.’

‘It’s cold here,’ he said. ‘Got a fire going.’

‘I know, Daddy, Mariella told me. Listen, something’s happening here. Turn on your TV and tune it to CNN.’

She heard him ask Mariella to turn on the small television in the corner of his study and her eyes flicked over to her own. The shiny station graphic spun across the screen then cut back to the newsreader. She nudged the volume back up. Down the line she heard the brief babble of a game show, a soap opera and some adverts – all in Portuguese – then the earnest tones of the global news channel.

Kathryn glanced up as the image behind the newsreader became a green figure standing on top of the mountain.

She heard her father gasp. ‘My God,’ he whispered. ‘A Sanctus.’

‘So far,’ the newsreader continued, ‘there has been no word from inside the Citadel either confirming or denying that this man is anything to do with them, but joining us now to shed some light on this latest mystery is Ruinologist and author of many books on the Citadel, Dr Miriam Anata.’

The newscaster twisted in his chair to face a large, formidable-looking woman in her early fifties wearing a navy blue pinstripe suit over a plain white T-shirt, her silver-grey hair cut short and precise, in an asymmetrical bob.

‘Dr Anata, what do you make of this morning’s events?’

‘I think we’re seeing something extraordinary here,’ she said, tilting her head forward and peering over half-moon glasses at him with her cold blue eyes. ‘This man is nothing like the monks one occasionally glimpses repairing the battlements or re-leading the windows. His cassock is green, not brown, which is very significant; only one order wears this colour, and they disappeared about nine hundred years ago.’

‘And who are they?’

‘Because they lived in the Citadel, very little is known about them, but as they were only ever spotted high up on the mountain we assume they were an exalted order, possibly charged with protection of the Sacrament.’

The news anchor held a hand to his earpiece. ‘I think we can go live now to the Citadel.’

The picture cut to a new, clearer image of the monk, his cassock ruffling slightly in the morning breeze, his arms still stretched out, unwavering.

‘Yes,’ said the newsreader. ‘There he is, on top of the Citadel, making the sign of the cross with his body.’

‘Not a cross,’ Oscar whispered down the phoneline as the picture zoomed slowly out revealing the terrifying height of the mountain. ‘The sign he’s making is the Tau .’

In the gentle glow of firelight in his study in the western hills of Rio de Janeiro, Oscar de la Cruz sat with his eyes fixed to the TV image. His hair was pure white in contrast to his dark skin, which had been burnished to its current leathery state by more than a hundred summers. But despite his great age, his dark eyes were still bright and alert and his compact body still radiated restless energy and purpose, like a battlefield general shackled to a peacetime desk.

‘What do you think?’ his daughter’s voice whispered in his ear.

He considered her question. He had been waiting for most of his life for something like this to happen, had spent a large part of it trying to make it so, and now he didn’t quite know what to do.

He rose stiffly from his chair and padded across the floor towards French doors leading on to a tiled terrace that dimly reflected the moonlight.

‘It could mean nothing,’ he said finally.

He heard his daughter sigh heavily. ‘Do you really believe that?’ she asked with a directness that made him smile. He’d brought her up to question everything.

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘No, not really.’

‘So?’

He paused, almost frightened to form the thoughts in his head and the feelings in his heart into words. He looked across the basin toward the peak of Corcovado Mountain, where O Cristo Redentor , the statue of Christ the Redeemer, held out its arms and looked down benignly upon the still-sleeping citizens of Rio. He’d helped to build it, in the hope that it would herald the new era. It had indeed become as famous as he had hoped, but that was all. He thought now of the monk, standing on top of the Citadel, the gesture of one man carried around the world in less than a second by the world’s media, striking an almost identical pose to the one it had taken him nine years to construct from steel and concrete and sandstone. His hand reached up and ran round the high collar of the turtleneck sweater he always wore.

‘I think maybe the prophecy is coming true,’ he whispered. ‘I think we need to prepare.’

The sun was now bright over the city of Ruin. Samuel watched the shadows shorten along the eastern boulevard, all the way to the fringe of red mountains in the distance. He barely felt the pain burning in his shoulders despite the strain of holding up his already exhausted arms for so long.

For some time now he had been aware of the activity below, the gathering crowds, the arrival of TV crews. The murmur of their presence occasionally drifted up to him on the rising thermals, making them sound uncannily close. But he only thought about two things. The first was the Sacrament, the second, the face of the girl in his past. As his mind cleared of everything else, they seemed to merge into a single powerful image, one that soothed and calmed him.