The Tower A Novel (Sanctus)

82





Franklin drove back into Charleston the same way he’d driven out. He had borrowed Sinead’s car, preferring the indignity of

turning up to an arrest in a Hyundai Elantra to the pain and probable rejection of asking Marie if he could borrow her Chevy

Malibu.

Jackson met him with two other uniforms as arranged at a gas station twenty miles outside the city limits. They drove back into

town the wrong way on the empty lanes of the outbound interstate, lights flashing and sirens blaring in case they met anything

coming the other way. The traffic on the inbound lane was as bad as it had been before and they drew envious glances as they blew

past from all the people behind wheels, still waiting patiently in line and inching their way back home.

They killed the sirens and lights when they made it downtown and the traffic started to thin again. They weaved through the snow-

softened streets and parked round the corner from Cooper’s church where Franklin went through his strategy for the take- down,

the layout of the building, the number of people likely to be inside. He even called up a picture of Cooper on his phone to show

them. The cops barely looked at it. Everybody knew who Fulton Cooper was.

They checked their weapons and put on body armour vests. Due to some mess-up they had only brought three so Franklin decided to do

without. He couldn’t imagine Cooper was going to put up any kind of a fight. They went through it all one last time then split

up, the two uniforms heading round the back to cover the rear entrance just in case the good Reverend lost his faith in the Lord

and decided to make a run for it.

Franklin and Jackson took the front. Franklin yanked hard on the bell pull and heard it ring somewhere inside the building. There

were lights on and the most recent update from the Eavesdropper log suggested that Cooper, or his phone at least, had still been

in the building as of ten minutes ago. Franklin reached into the gap between the mailbox and the wall to retrieve the crumpled

pack of cigarettes with the bug inside.

Snow fell. They waited.

A light came on above them, lifting them from the dark and throwing their shadows out onto the blank whiteness of the road. Miss

Boerman appeared in the doorway and regarded them with a look as cold as the ground they stood upon. ‘Yes?’

‘Is the Reverend in?’ Franklin asked.

‘Can’t this – whatever it is – wait until tomorrow?’

‘No.’ Franklin noticed her shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, a small thing but on her it seemed as though he’d caught her half

-dressed. Her hand rose to her shirt collar and her face hardened. ‘I’m afraid he’s unavailable.’ The fine scar on her face

wrinkled as she spoke. Franklin wondered if it was the reason she never smiled.

‘Mind if we come in and see for ourselves?’

‘Do you have a warrant?’

‘What, you mean like this?’

Jackson held up the signed paperwork he had managed to hustle out of the one judge who was still in town and answering his phone

and Franklin enjoyed the surprise that registered on the blank mask of her face. She looked up, still making no further move to

unlock the gate.

‘OK, I’ll tell you what I’ll do.’ Franklin opened his hands in his I’m-being-reasonable-here manner. ‘You have exactly three

seconds to open this gate or I’m going to shoot the lock off and arrest you for obstruction of justice, sound fair?’

He held up three fingers.

Then two.

He reached into his jacket for his gun.

She stepped forward and jabbed a key into the lock, twisting it open and standing aside to let them in.

‘Where is he?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Well take a guess and make it a good one.’

‘He’s probably at prayer, in the chapel.’

‘You think so or you know so?’

Her hand went to her collar again. ‘He’s there.’

‘Where is it?’

‘In the basement, down the side stairs you went up earlier.’

‘Is he alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Anyone else in the building I should know about?’

‘The church is closed.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

‘No. There’s no one here but Fulton and myself.’

Franklin smiled. ‘Thank you, miss. You have been most helpful. Why don’t you wait here until we’re done.’

He pushed through the front door and into the warmth of the entrance hall with Jackson following close behind. The phone room was

empty and so was the post room. They continued through to the narrow stairs and headed down, Franklin’s steps loud on the bare

boards, announcing his approach to whoever might be listening in the basement. He reached the bottom and waited for Jackson to

join him. ‘You set?’

A short nod.

‘OK, let’s do it.’

They moved together through the gloom towards a solid wooden door that swung open easily on well-oiled hinges to reveal a small

chapel beyond lit by sunlight miraculously pouring through a large stained-glass window. Cooper was on his knees in front of it,

head bowed, hands in front of him where they couldn’t be seen.

‘Hello, Reverend,’ Franklin said, moving to the centre of the room. ‘Sorry to burst in on you like this but I was just dying to

introduce you to a friend of mine. Detective Jackson of the Charleston PD, meet the man we’re here to arrest for conspiracy to

murder.’

Cooper didn’t move. Franklin glanced over at Jackson. ‘You want to Mirandize him while he’s saying his goodbyes to the Lord?’

Franklin sat down on one of the benches while Jackson read Cooper his rights. He felt suddenly tired from the long and event-

filled day. Driving away from Marie and Sinead had taken more out of him than he thought. At least Cooper wasn’t kicking and

screaming. He watched the Reverend lower his hands and look up at the cross built into the design of the window. ‘Might I ask on

what evidence you are arresting me?’

‘You might.’ Franklin produced his phone and played the intercepted phone message, Cooper’s voice sounding thin and tinny on

the small speaker. He switched it off before it got to the end.

‘You really have no idea what all of us are facing here, do you?’ Cooper said.

Franklin smiled. ‘Feel free to enlighten me,’ he said wearily, ‘though you would be advised to keep it short as everything you

now say constitutes evidence that can be used against you in a court of law.’

‘Whose law – the law of man? The law of governments? What fear I of such flawed and inadequate things?’

‘Well now, let’s see, they still have the death penalty in this state, so that’s one thing. Then there’s the lengthy custodial

sentence you’ll get either way where you may well be stuck in a tiny jail cell with a huge, horny dude by the name of Bubba or

somesuch, that would certainly put the fear of God into me.’

‘There is only one law I answer to, and that is the law of Jesus Christ the Saviour, and He is close at hand. He knows who serves

Him and who does not. And He will gather the righteous to His side when the time comes.’

The suddenness and speed of Cooper’s movement took Franklin totally by surprise. One moment he was kneeling on the floor, the

next he was across the floor and behind the solid wooden lectern. Franklin automatically dropped down, snatching his gun from his

shoulder holster and using the bench as cover. Out of his peripheral vision he saw Jackson break right and do the same.

‘We know about the rear exit, Cooper, and it’s covered, ‘Franklin shouted. ‘There’s no way out of this.’

‘That, my friend, is where you are wrong.’ Cooper rose from behind the lectern, a gun in his hand, pointing straight at

Franklin.

Instincts honed over a lifetime of service flooded Franklin’s brain, producing the slow, hyper-sensory state that existed in the

middle of a live gunfight.

He saw Cooper’s knuckle glow white as it tightened on the trigger.

Vest. He wasn’t wearing a vest.

He heard his own breathing, loud and slow as he took a breath and held it. Felt the re-coil jolt his arm, saw the flash of his gun

firing, then again, along with the slow, deep boom of both shots as they echoed in the chapel. He watched through the smoke as

Cooper spun away and fell, his gun falling from his hand as he hit the stone floor. Franklin was already moving, driven forward by

muscle memory, leading with his gun to make sure Cooper was properly down while part of his brain checked for any signs that he

had been hit.

Had Cooper got off a shot? Hard to tell.

He’d seen agents sprint up flights of stairs with serious wounds they hadn’t even known about because of adrenalin and delayed

shock. And he had promised Marie he would come back.

He reached Cooper’s body and assessed him from behind his gun. He was still breathing but only just, his eyes looking up at the

window, a pool of blood spreading beneath him too fast to be minor. Both shots had caught him centre mass. Major organ damage,

possibly arterial too. He could hear the rattle in his breath as his lungs filled with blood. He would drown before he bled out

and there was nothing he could do but watch.

Franklin bent down on one knee, placing his hand on Cooper’s shoulder so he knew he was there. ‘You’ve been hit pretty bad but

you’ll be OK,’ he lied. ‘There’s an ambulance on its way. Why don’t you tell me where Kinderman is?’

Cooper opened his mouth, still staring up at the cross. Franklin dropped down lower so he could hear him. Heard the whisper of a

voice broken by shallow breaths. ‘He’s on his way … to hell.’

Footsteps echoed outside as Miss Boerman clattered down the stairs in response to the gunshots. Jackson headed over to intercept

her. No point her seeing any of this. Through the noise Franklin became aware that Cooper was saying something else. He leaned

down lower, his ear so close he could feel the snatched breaths.

‘Thank you …’ Cooper whispered, ‘for … helping me … leave.’ The last word came out as a long sigh that ended in a rattle he

had heard too many times before. It was over. Cooper was dead.

Behind him he could hear voices now, Jackson low and calm, Miss Boerman angry and hysterical. He could hear more footsteps too as

the other two uniforms also responded to the gunfire.

Too late. Nothing to see.

He moved across to where Cooper’s gun was lying on the stone floor, holstering his own and slipping a pair of Nitrile gloves over

his hands. He picked up the discarded weapon and instantly knew from the weight and balance of it that it was empty. He checked to

make sure – no magazine in the clip, no bullet in the chamber – and realized what Cooper had meant with his dying words. He

wouldn’t have been able to face his Lord if he had taken his own life. Suicide was a mortal sin. So he had got Franklin to do it

for him.

Suicide by cop.





83





Shepherd was standing on the porch of Douglas’s observatory watching the FBI tech team trample all over the local cops when his

phone buzzed in his pocket.

‘Cooper is dead,’ Franklin said the moment he answered.

‘Jesus.’

‘He pulled a gun so I had to put him down. He was involved in the hit on Douglas, no question. I’ve got an intercepted phone

call of him discussing it and I’m currently standing in his studio looking at some particularly nasty phone images of the

professor taken post-mortem. They were being edited into a video package that was no doubt going to be the cornerstone of the late

Reverend’s next sermon: God’s retribution on the blasphemers, behold his mighty wrath – you can imagine.

‘Bad news is these same pictures are already on the internet, leaked anonymously, and now popping up on all the nuttier religious

conspiracy sites presumably so they could hide the source of them for their news piece. We’ll take them down as fast as we can

but they’re starting to get picked up by some of the news outlets and spread around on Twitter. We can’t keep this genie in the

bottle, which means we have to find Kinderman fast before he really goes to ground or Cooper’s angels of death get to him.’

‘I could use the email I found on Douglas’s laptop, tell Kinderman what’s happened here and offer the hand of friendship and

protection.’

‘The tech guys arrive there yet?’

‘Yeah, they’re currently making friends with the local folk.’

‘I bet. They’re not going to like you walking all over “their” crime scene but a man’s life is at stake here. Use the laptop

and wear gloves. If they complain about it in their report I’ll say I ordered you to do it.’

‘OK. I’ll let you know if he bites. You want me to head back to Charleston after I’m done here?’

There was a silence on the line and somewhere in the background Shepherd could hear Cooper’s voice still ranting away. ‘You

still there?’

‘Yeah, I’m here,’ Franklin sounded distracted. ‘You should get some rest then drive to Charlotte, it’s nearer than here. I’

ll warn them you’re coming.’

‘What about you?’

‘Call me if you get anything from Kinderman.’ The phone clicked before Shepherd could respond and the line went dead.

By insisting that he needed to use Douglas’s laptop Shepherd succeeded in annoying both the FBI tech guys and the local PD. He

ignored their looks and whispers as they worked together to photograph and remove Douglas’s body from the wall while he crouched

over the keyboard, figuring at least he’d done his bit to get them co-operating with each other. They were united now in thinking

he was an a*shole.

He opened Kinderman’s last message using pens to tap the keys, hit Reply and then paused. He would only have one shot at this.

Get it wrong and Kinderman would shut down the email account and vanish again. His eyes flicked to the countdown, getting smaller

all the time.

He could try and draw him out by pretending he was Douglas but he didn’t know enough about their shared history to do it

convincingly. Also, according to Franklin, the pictures of Douglas’s murder were already on the net and starting to garner press

interest. If Dr Kinderman had already seen them then a voice from beyond the grave was hardly likely to win his trust. On the

other hand if he had seen them, fear was a useful tool.

Shepherd tapped on a browser icon and started hunting for the pictures. It didn’t take him long. A couple of clicks away from

Cooper’s own website he found a page dedicated to the coming revelation. It was a thoroughly nasty piece of work, full of hate

and damnation, with a whole section dedicated to what it called ‘The Great Blasphemy of the New Tower of Babel’. There were

pictures of Hubble as well as Kinderman and Douglas with captions beneath identifying them as the architects of the great offence.

There were also headlines and links to various unfolding news stories telling of the sabotage and explosions, then – at the

bottom of the screen – Shepherd found a grainy version of the room he was now standing in, a quote from Ezekiel emblazoned

beneath it:

Then they will know that I am the Lord,

when I lay my vengeance upon them.

The quote was typed in letters the same colour as Douglas’s blood. Shepherd imagined someone in a basement, lit by the glow from

his screen and the demented fire that burned within him, matching the colour from the photograph then hitting the Publish button,

pleased with his little design flourish. He hoped the FBI would hit him hard when they eventually caught up with him. He copied

the link and posted it in the email.

He then found the link on Cooper’s site to the clip of him and Franklin being quizzed about the explosion at Marshall and the

sabotage of Hubble. He pasted that in too and started to type:

Dr Kinderman,

I hope this is you. If so, my apologies for contacting you in this way. I am a former student of Professor Douglas now working for

the FBI. I’m very sorry to inform you that the professor is dead – murdered – and that your life is also in danger. The same

people who tracked him down to his mountain lodge are now looking for you. We know you received the same warnings as he did and

that you both saw something in the missing data from Hubble. Let me help you, either in my capacity as a Federal agent or as an

old friend of the Professor’s. Either way, I want to help. Please let me.

Yours,

Joseph Shepherd

He re-read it and was surprised to discover tears in his eyes. He turned away from everyone and wiped them away. He had been so

carried along by the speed of events that he had kept the brutal shock of finding the professor’s body at arm’s length – until

now. Writing the message to Dr Kinderman had opened a window straight into something raw and painful. He hadn’t been looking for

the professor for very long, barely more than a day, but there was something ominous about the tragic way this search had ended

that made him think about the other one, the one he had been on for eight long years. And it made him afraid.

He copied the message to his own email account so he could monitor any response, then hit Send and let out a breath that he hadn’

t even known he’d been holding.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘it’s all yours.’ And turned to the others just as they were zipping Professor Douglas into a body bag.





84





Liv felt the tickle of sweat running down her back, her neck – everywhere. She had chosen to stay outside and lead by example. It

also gave her the chance to think, the quiet monotony of her task helping to clear her mind as she tried to evaluate the

significance of the new arrivals.

The doctors were now inside the compound building. Eric was immensely relieved that he was no longer the only medically trained

member of the growing desert community. Liv, on the other hand, felt that there was something ominous and unsettling about the

sudden arrival of so many doctors. With the last of the victims of the poisoning now dead and buried it suggested that some other

medical emergency was about to manifest itself.

The convoy of 4x4s they had arrived in had also contained boxes and boxes of much-needed supplies and medical equipment. Most of

the existing stock from the sick bay had been used up so Liv had tried to rationalize this as being the reason they’d been drawn

here. But at the core of her finely tuned instincts she knew it could not be as simple as that.

She thought about the circle with a cross through the centre – the symbol of disease and destruction. It was positioned between

the upward arrow of the mountain and the downward one of here. When she had first studied it she had assumed and hoped it referred

to the Citadel. But now she felt the meaning was ambiguous. Its position suggested that whatever disease the symbol represented

might either link the two places or separate them in some way.

She leaned against the fence post, grateful for its sturdy support, and felt the weight of everything closing down on her. The

blinding light and heat were making her faint and light-headed and she felt a lurch in her stomach like she’d eaten something

bad. She shivered, genuinely cold despite the enveloping heat and the sweat still running off her. Her heart thrummed in her chest

making her vision throb. Maybe she needed to get out of the sun for a bit, have one of Kyle’s re-hydration cocktails, and lie

down and rest for a while.

She started to walk back towards the compound, focusing on the nearest building. If she could just get out of the sun she would be

fine. She concentrated on her breathing, in through the nose and out through the mouth, placing one foot in front of the other to

close the distance to the nearest door. She had made it about half way when the earth started to shift beneath her feet. She fixed

her eyes on the dark rectangle of the door but it seemed to be getting further away.

She was stumbling now, the ground moving in waves beneath her feet, something close to panic rising inside her. Everything was

mixing together, the heat, her exhaustion, the half-glimpsed truths and fragments of ancient warnings that led her to the edge of

knowing what was to come without ever revealing what it was. And then there was Gabriel, always Gabriel – gone with hardly a word

save for the note she carried with her like a spell.

… Nothing is easy, but leaving you is the

hardest thing I have ever done …

… keep yourself safe – until I find you again …

But when would he return so she could finally rest? Clinging to the memory of him like this, was a form of grief.

At last her hand touched the metal skin of the door and the burning heat of it shocked her back to her senses. She caught a whiff

of something acrid, citrus, while her head thumped, the blood continued to drain and her mind pulsed through the percussive beat

of repeated thoughts:

Gabriel

The Citadel

The symbol for Contagion

The arrival of the doctors

The door gave and she almost fell to the floor as it opened. A wave of warm air billowed out, the air-conditioning not yet turned

on because everyone was working outside and fuel was too valuable to waste. It carried the same smell of lemons with it, thick and

sweet, making her feel nauseous again. She leaned against the wall, sliding forward and along it, using it for support as the

ground beneath her continued to shift and roll. She just needed to find a bed and lie down for a while until the world stopped

spinning.

Another door opened at the end of the corridor and Eric appeared, leading the doctors on a tour through the building. They looked

up at her and she saw concern cloud their faces. Then her knees gave way and she crumpled to the ground. She was unconscious

before she hit the floor.





85





Shepherd finally got away from the crime scene shortly after midnight. He headed north along the same road the killers had escaped

on and then east towards Charlotte. When he started the drive he was convinced that he was heading to the nearest field office to

report in and await new orders, but at the back of his mind he knew there was something else in Charlotte that would offer him a

different choice.

Exhaustion hit him hard after a couple of hours. Conditions had been pretty bad most of the way, snow and ice and dark unfamiliar

roads. Once he’d dropped down from the higher ground the weather improved, or at least became good enough that he wasn’t scared

of getting snowed in, he pulled into a rest stop and closed his eyes for a few minutes. He awoke with a start when his phone

buzzed in his pocket. He checked the time and realized he’d been asleep for nearly three hours. The car had turned into an icebox

with frost on the inside of the windows where moisture from his breath had frozen. He dug his phone from his pocket and discovered

he had mail. He opened the app and the temperature dropped a little more. It was from Kinderman.

You seem to know a lot, Agent Shepherd, and I appreciate your concern.

If you are truly knowledgeable then you will know where to find me. I’m just standing on a hill looking to the east for new stars

in old friends, as those like us have done since the beginning of time.

Shepherd stared at the message, trying to make sense of it through the fog of his sleepy brain. He re-read it, his fatigue making

him irritable that he was having to deal with this riddle in the middle of the frozen night. Why couldn’t Kinderman just tell him

where he was?

Twice he hit reply and started composing a message to that effect, but both times he deleted it, instinctively knowing that he

would not get another response. In the end, he slipped the phone back in his pocket and drove the rest of the way to Charlotte

thinking it over with the heater on full, sipping black coffee from a Big Gulp he’d bought at a truck stop.

It was almost six in the morning when he hit the outskirts of Charlotte and parked next to a McDonalds, retrieved the Bureau

laptop from the passenger footwell and hooked onto the free Wi-Fi that was thankfully still working. From where he sat he could

see downtown lying dark before him, the result of a power outage that had sunk half the city into blackness. The only light was

coming from a few cars that sketched the lines of unseen streets and a few flickering orange patches where fires burned. It was

terrifying how quickly the ordered world had started to unravel. Maybe this would be how it ended, not with some cosmic collision

or the wrath of some vengeful god but with society quietly imploding on itself as everyone just headed home and stayed there, all

deliveries ending, all crops lying ungathered in fields, the major utilities switching themselves off one by one as no one turned

up to work any more. Maybe no one would actually care, or even remember how things used to be.

He opened the laptop to check in on whatever Agent Smith had dredged up in the night and was greeted by the pinging sound that

made his heart tumble in his chest and he was rapidly growing to hate. The new search he had put in place for Melisa had come back

with two results.

The first hit was her name on an old passenger manifest out of Dulles Airport in Washington. She had flown out of the country

eight years ago on a Cyprus-Turkish airliner heading for a place called Gaziantep. He opened a browser and looked it up. The

Wikipedia entry told him it was a city in southeast Turkey. He clicked on the map embedded in the article. Just to the northwest

of Gaziantep, in the foothills of the Taurus mountains, was another city, marked by a T shaped-cross: Ruin – the place Melisa had

listed as her birthplace. She had been going home.

The second result was more recent. It was an application for a temporary work visa dated only a year ago. She had been trying to

come back to the States but her application had been denied. He noticed the name on the form was Erroll. Maybe she never married,

or maybe had but had kept her name.

He looked at the two results, two more precious pieces of evidence of her continued existence, and felt an almost physical

yearning to be with her. He pulled his phone from his pocket. The countdown application was now installed on it and running as his

wallpaper. He watched the numbers steadily declining towards zero.

All the time he had lost. How much time left?

Kinderman’s message was still open and he re-read it, hating him now for playing games when so much was at stake. It was like a

taunt – ‘If you’re smart enough then come and get me’ – a clever test to find out what he knew. Well, Professor Douglas had

been standing on a hill, staring up at the stars and look where that got him. Maybe Kinderman had a similar place and that’s

where he was now, drawn there by the homing instinct. But Franklin had run checks on Kinderman’s background and nothing like that

had shown up.

… standing on a hill looking to the east for new stars in old friends, as those like us have done since the beginning of time.

What the hell did that mean? It wasn’t enough to go on. He didn’t have time to look up every old observatory in the world and

then go and check them out on the off-chance Kinderman might be there when all he really wanted to do was get on a plane and fly

to southern Turkey.

He froze as a thought struck him.

He clicked on the ghost icon and scrolled quickly through the document looking for the second lot of CARBON results. There they

were:

GOBEKLI TEPE

HOME

There was a link next to the first one and he clicked it open to remind himself what it said.

Göbekli Tepe Turkish: [2] (“Potbelly Hill”[3]) is a Neolithic (stone-age) hilltop sanctuary erected at the top of a mountain

ridge in the southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. It is the oldest known wholly human-made religious structure and also the

oldest observatory, believed to have been constructed by the proto-religious tribe known as the Mala [1][4]

He clicked back to the map still open from earlier and typed Gobekli Tepe into the Get Directions field.

The map widened a little and marked a route there from Gaziantep. It was just over an hour’s drive east. Ruin was a half hour’s

drive northwest. Shepherd closed the laptop and started the engine, his mind made up and his destination set. He could decide

which way to go when he got there.