Everything had happened so quickly. The race across the city with Matt and Scarlett as the typhoon relentlessly destroyed everything around them. The temple itself, with dead bodies littering the ground, killed by the Triad soldiers who had been sent ahead to prepare the way for them. The sudden appearance of Scott and Pedro, carried thousands of miles from Peru in the blink of an eye. Then the gunshot. For a dreadful moment, Richard thought that Matt had been hit, but then he had seen Scarlett fall right in front of him and he had scooped her into his arms, knowing that the wound was bad, seeing the blood spread across his shirt.
And with Scarlett unconscious, the entire temple had given itself to the storm. The walls had been ripped apart like damp paper and he knew that if they waited more than a few seconds, the magical door that was their only way out would disappear. Matt had given the order and of course they had all obeyed. Richard remembered the fourteen-year-old boy he had first met in the Yorkshire town of Greater Malling. Then, Matt had been almost helpless, a delinquent in trouble with the police, and fostered by a woman who delighted in taunting him. It was only after Matt had discovered his power that he had begun to change, taking his place as the leader of the Gatekeepers. He had stopped being afraid.
They had plunged through the door just seconds apart, and even then Richard had wondered how it was going to work. The doors had been constructed for the Gatekeepers but each of them was allowed to take one person with them – one passenger. Who would decide where they were going? Weren’t they meant to have agreed on it before they left?
Through the door. If Richard had expected anything magical about the experience – a tunnel of bright lights and perhaps a whoosh of acceleration – he would have been disappointed. The other side was pitch-black. He was briefly aware of Jamie next to him, or maybe it was his brother, Scott, and then he was on his own with Scarlett still unconscious in his arms. He peered back through the darkness, but there was nothing. He wasn’t quite sure what to do, but at the same time he was very aware of the situation he was in. No matter where he ended up, his first job was to get Scarlett to a hospital. She could die in his arms.
He had arrived in some sort of corridor and it was getting lighter ahead: a strange, orange light like nothing he had ever seen before. It was throwing shadows that swirled around the walls. At the same time, he heard a howling like a thousand wolves. The further he went, the brighter the light became and the louder the noise. At last he stepped out …
… into a sandstorm.
He was almost knocked backwards. But for the weight of Scarlett, he would have been thrown off his feet. He could see nothing. The sand pounded him, blinding him. He could feel it stinging his arms and cheeks and he had to press his lips together to stop it entering his mouth, bowing his head into his shoulder so that he could breathe. His hands had been wet with Scarlett’s blood and the sand clung to them, instantly forming a coating over his skin. He drew her tighter towards him, trying to protect her from the worst of it. He could have been anywhere. One thing was certain. This wasn’t England. Where the hell was he?
Somebody shouted. The voice came from nowhere and meant nothing. Richard stood where he was as first one car engine then two more started up, moving in on him from different directions. It was only when they were very close that they became visible, looming out of the billowing sand as if from another dimension. They were open-top jeeps, dark green, military, driven by men partly in uniform but with their heads wrapped in scarves and dark glasses. They pulled up in an arrow formation, the lead jeep pointing at Richard. And suddenly there were soldiers everywhere, moving forward with automatic rifles, covering the two of them from every side.
Richard couldn’t take it all in. His thoughts were still fixed on Scarlett, who seemed to be getting lighter in his arms, as if her life was slipping away from her. It didn’t matter why these soldiers had come or what they wanted. Had they actually been waiting here? That was what it looked like. But it wasn’t important now.
“I need help!” Richard shouted and the sand eagerly swept into his mouth, almost choking him. The howl of the storm whipped the words away. “A hospital!” he shouted again. “A doctor!”
One of the soldiers, the commanding officer maybe, reached him. He was wearing a green tunic and trousers, a tattered red-and-white bandanna and black wraparound glasses. He was a big man, almost six and a half feet tall, with wrestler’s shoulders. He was unarmed. He shouted something and reached out, taking hold of Scarlett, pulling her away. Richard resisted, refusing to let go, then felt something huge and heavy thump into his back. As his knees buckled, he was aware that another of the soldiers had crept up on him from behind and clubbed him with the butt of his rifle. Richard fell. Scarlett was snatched away.
There was nothing he could do to stop them. He felt ill, ashamed of himself. But there were dozens of them and he was alone. He knew now that his instinct was right. Whoever they were, these people had been waiting for them … which meant that they knew who Scarlett was. They were taking her into captivity … and what of him? If they knew about her, they would know that he was of no use to them. As Richard lay there, cocooned in sand, he waited for the bullet that would be his end.
But at least he was wrong about that. They wanted him too. Richard felt two soldiers grab hold of him under his arms, dragging him towards one of the jeeps. Scarlett had disappeared, separated from him by the storm. He could barely see anything. His eyes were already cloaked with sand. He heard a door click open and he was thrown forward, landing on the soft leather of a car seat. Somebody was shouting again, the words falling over each other, and he guessed that he was hearing Arabic and that he must be in some desert in the Middle East. It was certainly hot enough. His clothes were clinging to him and he could feel the sweat trickling down his skin. But if this was a desert, what was the building he had left behind him?
All twenty-five doors were located in sacred places, although, in truth, the places were sacred for all the wrong reasons. It was the doors that mattered. They had been there first. The buildings – churches, temples, mosques, whatever – had sprung up around them, constructed by local people who had always remembered that the doors were special, even if they had forgotten exactly why.
He heard car doors slamming. The soldiers had got what they had come for and were now preparing to carry them away. The engines started up again. Richard felt the jeep begin to vibrate beneath him.
But before they could move, there was a sudden explosion of gunfire, bullets fired from unseen guns, slamming through the wall of sand. Richard looked up just as the windscreen of the jeep shattered, broken glass showering down onto his shoulders and head. The soldier who had been about to drive him away jerked in his seat. Blood sprayed out of the side of his head and he slumped against the steering wheel, setting off the horn which began to blare continuously. Another bullet thwacked into the passenger door and Richard ducked down, afraid of being hit in the confusion.
All around him, people were shouting, panicking. The gunfire intensified. Richard glimpsed one of the soldiers get hit. He spun round, throwing away his own rifle as if in surrender, then allowed himself to be sucked into a whirlpool of sand. Whoever had been waiting for them on the other side of the door had themselves come under attack. Scarlett! He couldn’t just stay hiding here. He had to find her.
Richard scrabbled for the door handle, opened it and tumbled out of the jeep, keeping low to avoid the bullets. The soldier who had just been shot was lying close to him and his bandanna had come free. Richard grabbed hold of it and tied it around his own face, covering his nose and mouth. The dead man was very young, dark-skinned, clean-shaven. Perhaps the sandstorm was beginning to subside, because Richard could make out the shapes of the other jeeps, parked a few metres away. He saw another soldier standing in front of him, firing at nothing. Then he was hit by a bullet and thrown off his feet. He didn’t move again.
Richard ran forward and reached the nearest jeep. He had been lucky. Scarlett was th
ere and she was on her own. For a moment, Richard stood there, uncertain what to do. She looked so fragile, stretched out on the back seat, her skin very pale and her eyes closed. She was barely breathing. Someone had covered her with a blanket but she had stirred in her sleep and it had slipped to one side. He didn’t dare lift her up. Moving her again might kill her and how could he carry her through the sand and the gunfire – the one almost as lethal as the other? He glanced at the dashboard and saw keys dangling from the ignition. The driver must have left them there, joining the others in the fight. Now Richard knew what he had to do. He had no idea what was happening, who was fighting whom. He just had to get them out of there.
He threw himself into the front and turned the key. The engine coughed into life. He could see nothing out of the windscreen. His elbow had accidentally banged one of the controls and the windscreen wipers were scraping uselessly against the glass, pushing waves of sand left and right. He rammed the jeep into first gear, afraid that one of the soldiers would return at any moment. The wheels spun in the sand but then the vehicle leapt forward. They were away!
He was still driving blind, although the sand was getting thinner – he was sure of it. There seemed to be some sort of structure away to his left … not a building but a statue or a memorial of some sort. It looked like a huge, crouching cat. His own jeep, the one he had just left, was in front of him. Richard swung the wheel and swerved round it. He was picking up speed. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two of the soldiers running towards him, shouting, but he was away before they could get anywhere near.
Now just one man stood in front of him. From his size and from the colour of his headscarf, Richard knew he must be the commanding officer, the man who had snatched Scarlett in the first place. The jeep was doing about thirty kilometres an hour. Richard pressed his foot down on the accelerator, waiting for the man to dive out of the way. But he just stood there, huge and menacing, a concrete pillar in the driving sand. He was holding a gun but didn’t seem to want to use it. Was he mad? Did he want to be killed? Richard didn’t care. He wasn’t going to let anyone stop him.
And then, at the last minute, as the man’s figure filled the windscreen, something extraordinary happened. It was more horrible than anything Richard had ever seen.
It was impossible to see it clearly – what with the sand, the movement of the jeep, the chaos of the moment. The man’s head seemed to split open. His shoulders peeled back. It was as if he had been hit by a mortar and blown apart. But there was no mortar. The man had done it deliberately, and even as Richard sped towards him, a snake’s head and neck reared up from the ruin of what had been his neck. Huge tentacles slithered out, replacing his arms, and suddenly the man was only human from the waist down. Above, he was a monster, squirming in the sand, the snake mouth spitting, the eyes blazing, the tentacles writhing as if in pain.
Richard knew he couldn’t avoid it. But nor could he stop. So he did the one thing that was left for him to do and stamped on the accelerator, driving straight into the man-thing. There was a dreadful thud as the front of the jeep hit it and Richard felt the shock travel up his arms. The creature let out a hideous screech and disappeared from sight. The jeep lost control, spun in a circle, nearly turning over on one side, then stopped suddenly. The engine stalled.
The creature hadn’t been killed. As Richard looked round, it stumbled to its feet, the snake neck twisting from side to side, its tongue flickering in and out. Richard turned the key. The engine turned over but the jeep refused to start. The creature took a step towards him. Richard froze. Every instinct made him want to get out and run. But he couldn’t leave Scarlett on her own. He tried the key again. The engine was dead. The creature came another step closer.
Then two more men appeared, stepping out of the sandstorm, dressed in pale grey and yellow. Desert camouflage. They were carrying machine guns, waist-high, strapped over their shoulders. They opened fire at the same moment, sending a blaze of bullets like two white-hot knife blades in front of them. The creature howled and twisted as it was cut into pieces by the continuous fire but the two men didn’t stop, keeping their fingers pressed on the triggers until their cartridges were empty and what was left of the creature fell and lay still.
The men ran over to the jeep. One of them pulled open the door, briefly examined Scarlett then turned to Richard.
“Vous êtes sortis de la pyramide?” he asked.
“What?” Richard was too dazed to even realize that the man was speaking French, let alone translate.
“You came through the door – with the girl?” The man spoke English with a thick French accent.
“Yes.”
“Then you must come with us. Now. Quickly. We are here to help you.”
The other man was already lifting Scarlett out of the back. Richard slid out himself. There was less gunfire now and the sandstorm was almost at an end. Looking back the way he had come, he saw three constructions which he recognized instantly – which had appeared in tens of thousands of postcards and which would have been known to anyone in the world.
The pyramids of Giza. And in front of them, the statue he had partly glimpsed. The Sphinx.
Now he knew. He and Scarlett had escaped from Hong Kong.
And the door had brought them to Egypt.
THIRTEEN
They drove Richard at speed through the city. He had never been to Cairo but he had seen enough pictures to be able to identify it – not just the pyramids but the great expanse of the Nile with its palm trees and slender feluccas, the mosques and minarets, the colourful markets filled with spices and tourist souvenirs. He was wrong. Cairo was unrecognizable. It was a city at war with itself and it had clearly been for some time. They sped through streets covered with rubble, buildings blown apart. Burnt-out cars and trucks lined the way. There was barely a single wall that wasn’t pockmarked with bullets or shattered by mortar shells, and many of the pieces that were still standing were daubed in graffiti, political slogans in Arabic scrawled in dripping red paint.
As far as Richard could see, the shops were empty, the offices abandoned, the entire infrastructure destroyed. And still the shooting continued, in the far distance, sounding disconnected and almost harmless until they drove around the next corner, when it became ugly, loud and horribly close. A military plane flew overhead. There was a brief pause and then the heavy blast of a bomb finding its target. The ground shook and smoke rose into the air, still heavy with sand. There was smoke everywhere, trickling up in separate columns that finally joined together to form a thick pall in the sky. Nobody was moving in the streets, but when Richard examined the broken pavements and the wreckage of the buildings, he saw that there were dead bodies everywhere, lying where they had fallen and left to rot in the sun. He could smell them. Whoever had started this war in Cairo, whoever was fighting for control of the city, they clearly hadn’t noticed that there was almost nothing left.
Their convoy consisted of two jeeps – one carrying Richard, the other Scarlett – a covered truck and two outriders on ancient, dusty motorbikes. Richard knew that he would never be able to find his way out of here without a guide. Even if he could read the street signs, which were in Arabic, most of them had been twisted out of shape or smashed and all the streets were so damaged that they looked the same. Turn left past the wreckage, continue through the wreckage, turn right at the wreckage. Already his mind was racing, taking in the impossibility of what he was seeing. When he had travelled to Hong Kong, less than a week ago, there had been no war in Egypt. Unrest – yes. There was always unrest in the Middle East. Libya had recently fallen, soon followed by Syria. Iran was making threatening noises to anyone who would listen. But there had been no war in Egypt. How could this violence have begun and spread so rapidly? What had happened?
He would worry about that later. Right now his thoughts were with Scarlett. She was in the vehicle ahead of him and he wondered if she was still alive. Would there be any hospitals still standing in all this wrecka
ge that had the facilities to treat her? And what of Matt? Richard felt a wrench of helplessness, knowing that after all the two of them had been through together, they were suddenly apart. The door which had brought him from Hong Kong to Giza could have taken Matt anywhere. The two of them could be – and probably were – on opposite sides of the world.
The lead jeep swerved around a corner, through a shattered archway and continued down a narrow alley that had shuttered windows on both sides and dozens of washing lines criss-crossing each other with sheets and ragged clothes hanging down. It was as if they had entered a secret passage. The way ahead was blocked. A bus had been abandoned in the street, but as they approached, it was somehow drawn aside to reveal a gateway behind. Richard saw armed soldiers, dressed in the same desert camouflage, waiting in a courtyard beyond and he knew that they had arrived.
The compound was a rectangle of dust and concrete, surrounded by a breeze-block wall that was still intact and covered with faded posters and graffiti. Three anonymous buildings faced the main entrance, all of them three storeys high with barred windows, crumbling plaster and no sign of any decoration at all. As the vehicles pulled in, Richard saw goalposts with the tattered remains of a net and a wire hoop for basketball. This had once been a school. Or a prison. Behind them, more soldiers were sliding a heavy steel door across the entrance. There were wooden observation posts at each corner, manned by guards with guns and radio transmitters, doing their best to stay out of sight.
The jeeps came to a halt. As Richard got out, he saw Scarlett being lifted by two men and carried into the building furthest away. He tried to follow her but suddenly the Frenchman who had spoken to him at the pyramids was at his side.
“There is nothing you can do for her, Mr Cole. We have medical facilities here and she will be well cared for. We have been waiting a long time for you to arrive. You must come with me.”