“He only did it because there was no other choice,” Matt said. “That’s the way he is. He says he doesn’t want to be part of this but he’ll do anything to protect you.”
Then Jamie described his time in the village in England, his escape on the canal boat. “I guess I’m still there right now,” he said. “With Holly and this guy – the Traveller. It’ll take us about a week to get to London and we’re just going to have to hope that St Meredith’s is still there.”
They were all so glad to see each other that they didn’t notice that Scott hadn’t bothered to tell anything of his story. He was almost silent, making sure he kept his distance from Pedro. They hadn’t spoken a word to each other.
“I was going north,” Pedro said. He was choosing his words carefully. Scott was listening and Pedro was concerned. He might repeat everything he heard here to Jonas Mortlake. He wondered why Matt had stopped him from warning the others. “There was a volcano eruption … in Naples. I still don’t know what happened. I was on a boat and then I was here.”
And that was what mattered most. They were finally together … even if these were only the dream versions of themselves. From now on, it would matter less that they were thousands of miles apart in the real world. All they had to do was fall asleep at the same time. They would meet each other again.
“We ought to get on with it,” Matt said. “Lohan is going to wake me up at any moment and we have a long drive ahead of us through the jungle in Brazil. What’s important is that the five of us know what we’re doing and how this is going to work out. Let me tell you straight off that it’s not going to be easy…”
Not easy. Not easy at all.
“You probably guessed that much already. The Old Ones have stolen ten years from us and somehow they’ve stretched those years and made them much longer. The whole world has changed. But we’re still here – the Five – and we can still win. We were born for this time and we have to hold onto that, no matter what happens now or in the future. I always thought this sort of thing was meant to be fun … becoming a hero and saving the world. But it’s not going to be fun. Remember that. Maybe not all of us are going to live. But we don’t have any choice except to go on because that’s how it has been written.”
Written.
“We need to get to Antarctica, to a place called Oblivion. Chaos is there, surrounded by his armies, in a fortress built out of ice and stone. He’s waiting for us and that’s where we have to go.”
“But why?” Scarlett said. “That doesn’t make any sense, Matt. All we have to do is meet. Isn’t that it? So we should go as far away from him as possible.”
“It has to be Oblivion, Scarlett. There are things you don’t know, things I can’t tell you.”
Alone among the Five, Pedro understood what he meant. Scott had left Naples with Jonas Mortlake and presumably he was now inside the fortress. That was why the other four had to travel there. It was the only place in the world where they could be together.
“And there are people there who need our help,” Matt went on quickly, before Scarlett could argue. “Word is leaking out. Somehow people have found out that there’s going to be a last battle and that it’s going to be fought in Antarctica. They’re already beginning to move south. They call themselves the World Army. But they don’t have any real understanding of what they’re up against. A lot of them are going to die for no reason – but without us, it’ll be much, much worse. Trust me, Scarlett. You’re needed.”
“But I told you. I’m in the middle of the desert. In Egypt.”
“There are still planes flying. You can persuade someone to take you.”
“What about the doors?” Jamie asked. “If they’re not working any more…”
“The doors will open again eventually. Somehow, you have to make it to St Meredith’s in London. You can trust the man who calls himself the Traveller. He’ll look after you. And, Pedro…” Matt turned to him and for a moment Pedro thought there was something strange in his eyes, something he didn’t quite understand. “You’re going to St Peter’s in Rome,” he continued. “There’s a door there that will take you to Antarctica. Giovanni will help you.”
“How do you know all this?” Pedro demanded. “How do you know about Giovanni?”
Matt shrugged and looked away. “I’ve been to the library,” he said.
“And what’s my part in this?” Scott asked. The others looked at him curiously. His voice was dull and hostile. He was sitting, cross-legged, on his own, slightly apart from the rest of the group. And he was dressed differently from them. He was wearing an expensive black shirt and jeans. His clothes were new.
“You and I can talk about that in a minute,” Matt said. He got to his feet. “The five of us are together again and that’s all that matters. We’re still alive. And I will make you a promise. The price may be high but we are going to win.”
He walked over to Scott. “Let’s go…”
“We’ve got nothing to say,” Scott muttered.
“That’s not true.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you, Matt. I mean it.”
“Give me five minutes, Scott. That’s all I’m asking. After that, you never have to see me again.”
“Five minutes?”
“What difference does it make? You’re asleep anyway. When you wake up, we’ll be miles apart.”
“OK. Whatever you say.” Scott rose lazily to his feet. He was still ignoring Pedro. But he was also ignoring Jamie and that was much worse.
Scarlett watched the two of them walk away. She turned to Pedro. “What’s going on?” she asked. “You were with Scott in Italy. What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” Pedro replied, miserably.
“No? So how come you look half-starved, you’re in rags and you’ve got a broken finger, while Scott looks like he’s just walked out of a fashion show?”
“Pedro…?” Jamie pleaded with him to say more.
“I can’t tell you!” Pedro sprang to his feet and walked off in the opposite direction, kicking up grey dust. He quickly disappeared down the side of the hill.
Jamie and Scarlett were left alone. “The five of us together again?” Jamie muttered, echoing what Matt had just said. “It doesn’t feel that way.”
Matt and Scott were still together in the empty grey landscape. Matt was doing most of the talking, trying to make Scott understand something. Scott was shaking his head. Matt stopped him, then spoke quickly and urgently. He seemed to have regained his confidence.
He knows something we don’t, Jamie thought.
Scott muttered something. He was trying to back away but Matt was staying close to him, refusing to let him leave.
Scarlett wished she could hear what they were saying. She didn’t know if Matt had persuaded Scott to see his point of view and wondered if she could help. She thought of going over to them but then she saw a man walking towards her. He was still dressed in a white shirt but, from the front, she could see that there was a pattern of some sort on his waistcoat. He was an Arab. She saw that too. The two black discs covering his eyes glimmered in the fluorescent light.
“Five,” he said.
Always the same word. Nothing else and no explanation… “Matt!” she called out.
But Matt was far away, still talking to Scott. At the same time, she heard the sound of an engine revving and somebody shouting at her. There was blood on her hands. She jolted forward as the car she was in hit a pothole.
She was in the desert, in the front of a Land Cruiser. Rémy, the Frenchman, was slumped in the back.
Egypt was behind them. Dubai was eighty kilometres ahead.
WHEEL OF FORTUNE
TWENTY-SIX
Albert Rémy was dead. The Frenchman, who had been part of the Nexus in London and who had waited ten years for them in Egypt, hadn’t made it through the night. Richard wasn’t surprised. For three days, Rémy had been in constant pain, every jolt and every bump on the deserted main road causing him to cry
out, a bubble of blood appearing on his lips. A bullet had entered his chest just under his left arm and Richard suspected it had punctured his lung. His breathing had been horrible, a constant rattling that competed with the engine of the car, and both Richard and Scarlett had known the moment he had slipped away. That had happened during the fourth night but they had kept going, afraid to stop in the dark.
Then the sun rose, the road was empty with nothing but desert all around – as it had been almost always during the long, sweltering journey that had taken them out of Egypt across the Suez Canal bridge and through no fewer than three countries, including the full length of Saudi Arabia. Richard had driven the entire distance, his eyes glazed, his hands grimly clutching the steering wheel. For her part, Scarlett had talked to him almost incessantly, not because she had anything to say but because she knew she had to help keep him awake. There had been almost nothing to look at, nothing to separate one dreary mile from the next. Even the sight of a burnt-out bus or armoured vehicle became a landmark, something to break the monotony. As they continued south, they had passed a few scattered villages, electricity pylons, abandoned frontier posts with twisting barbed wire and ragged flags … but not a single sign of human life. The sand was still blowing and it might have disguised the truth. Perhaps people had heard them as they drove around Eilat in Israel or Aqaba in Jordan and had run to intercept them. If so, they had been too late. Richard had kept his foot down. The car hurtled on.
The sky was grey, the sand a dirty orange as they dragged Rémy out and laid him on the ground. Richard climbed onto the Land Cruiser and pulled a spade from the various supplies and pieces of equipment that were strapped to the roof. Scarlett realized that he was going to dig a grave and felt guilty because, if she’d had her way, she wouldn’t have bothered. Rémy was dead. What difference would it make to him?
“Richard, let me do it,” she said.
Richard shook his head. “No. I’m fine. In fact I need the exercise. I’ve lost count of how many hours I’ve been cooped up in that thing.”
“We’re only about an hour from Dubai.”
“I know. If he’d waited just a little longer we might have got him to a hospital.”
“If there are any hospitals…”
“Yeah. Take a look at this…” He handed something to her, a thick wallet made of pale brown leather.
“What is it?”
“It’s Rémy’s. It was in his pocket.”
Scarlett opened the wallet. Inside, in one of the compartments, there was a wad of banknotes; American one-hundred-dollar bills, neatly pressed together. Scarlett flicked them with her thumb. “How much is there here?” she asked.
“There’s fifty of them. Five thousand dollars.” Richard took the spade in both hands. “I guess he was keeping them for a rainy day.”
“Not much chance of that out here.”
“It’s funny though. There are no photographs. No pictures of his wife or kids. Nothing about him. Just a pile of cash. We’ll never know anything about him.”
“He tried to help us. That’s enough.” Scarlett closed the wallet. “The money may help us. Maybe it’ll buy us a ticket out.”
The sand was soft and it only took Richard about half an hour to cut a trench a metre deep. That was enough. He threw down the spade, then he and Scarlett went over and dragged Rémy in. As she took hold of the dead man’s ankles, Scarlett had one of those moments where she seemed to be looking at herself and couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. What would Mrs Ridgewell say if she were here now? she wondered. Somehow she doubted that the head teacher at her old school in Dulwich would have any advice on how to bury dead Frenchmen in the Arabian desert.
Keep the feet together, Scarlett. And try not to get any more blood on your hands. You’re covered enough already…
Had this really happened to her? How had her life come to this?
The body slumped into the grave. Before Richard could do any more work, Scarlett snatched up the spade and began to fill it in. Richard took out a canister of water and drank, his face covered in sweat and grime. At least they still had water. They had been careful, rationing themselves over the course of the journey. They couldn’t be sure what the water situation would be in Dubai. Neither of them said the obvious, even if both of them secretly thought it. Rémy had drunk more than either of them in the last three days. And it had all been wasted.
Scarlett finished her work. “Do you want to say anything?” she asked.
“You mean – a prayer?” Richard handed her his canister. “I was never really the religious sort.”
“Me neither. I used to hate chapel at school.”
“Let’s get’s back in the car.”
“Actually, I’ve got something to tell you, Richard.” Scarlett had been waiting for the right moment. “I saw Matt last night.”
“Matt?” Richard’s face brightened. “He was in the dreamworld?”
“He called us all together. We were all there. Matt, Pedro, Jamie, Scott…”
“That’s great news. How is he?”
Scarlett hesitated. She knew how close Richard was to Matt and how much he’d worried about him – but she was determined not to lie. “I don’t know, Richard. I got the feeling there was something he wasn’t telling me. He was very serious. I thought he was upset about something.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s in Brazil. Lohan is with him.”
Quickly, Scarlett told Richard everything that had happened outside the library. The sun was rising and although the colour of the sky hadn’t changed, it was getting hotter. They needed to set off soon. Without the Land Cruiser’s air-conditioning, they would both melt.
“We have to get to Antarctica,” she said.
“Antarctica!” Richard shook his head. “That’s a funny thing to be talking about in the middle of the desert! Right now we must be, what, ten thousand miles away?”
“Rémy said there were planes flying in and out of Dubai.”
“That was a while ago. Things may have changed.”
“We’d better find out. And at least we’ve got money now. We can pay.”
“You’re right.” Richard nodded. “Maybe that’s where it all ends … this whole thing. On the ice.”
“I really hope so,” Scarlett said.
The two of them got back into the car and drove off. The unmarked grave dwindled into the distance behind them. Neither of them looked back.
Dubai took them by surprise. One moment they were driving through the unremitting emptiness of the desert, the next they were boxed in, with modern streets and buildings appearing all around them, as if the city had been lying in the sand and had leapt up to ambush them. Their first impression, particularly after Cairo, was one of extraordinary cleanliness. There was no war going on here and they had left the sandstorms behind. In fact the sky was a dazzling blue, the shops and offices gleaming – as if they had only just been built. The streets were wide and evenly spaced with what might once have been lawns stretching their entire length. All the grass had died but the earth that remained was neat and symmetrical. The city didn’t seem to have grown. It could have been laid out deliberately, piece by piece.
And it was completely deserted.
Richard and Scarlett had driven down half a dozen empty avenues before they saw what should have been obvious from the start. There were cars parked everywhere, many of them very expensive ones… Ferraris, Jaguars, Rolls Royces. But there were no drivers and they were alone on the road. The traffic lights were still working uselessly, blinking from green to yellow to red, but nothing moved. There was nothing to move. Most of the shops had been stripped but they saw fridges, furniture, plasma screen TVs and even grand pianos on display. They were too heavy to carry so they had simply been left behind. As they continued forward, they passed fountains without water and palm trees which, against the odds, had managed to survive. The traffic lights changed and changed again. After a while, they learnt to ignore them.
All around them, huge hotels, shopping centres and skyscrapers seemed almost to mock them – or to mock each other. The buildings were extraordinary, the visions of architects with all the money in the world and the desire only to outdo each other. There were constructions that curved and rippled and shone silver or white. They were shaped like knives, like rockets, like the sail of a ship. And at their very centre, soaring above all of them, stood the Burj Dubai, which had briefly been the tallest building in the world and which appeared like a futuristic steel syringe, desperately trying to puncture the upper atmosphere. They were all empty. Scarlett wasn’t sure quite why she could be so certain. But they had the same sort of lifelessness as a group of statues in a museum that has closed for the night. They faced each other, solid and unmoving. Dead. There wasn’t a flicker of movement anywhere. And the very motion of the car as they rolled slowly forward seemed alien and unwanted.
“It’s quiet,” Richard said, as much to hear the sound of his voice as to say anything that mattered.
“There’s no one here.”
“But there hasn’t been any fighting. There are no smashed windows. Look at these cars! They could have been parked overnight.”
It was true. All the parked cars were clean and polished and looked as if they would start at the turn of a key. There was no litter blowing in the street, no rubbish waiting to be collected. It was as if the city had woken up one morning and the people simply hadn’t been there.
“Richard … what are we going to do?”
“We could find a five-star hotel.”
“I don’t think I want to stay here.”
“Then let’s see if there’s a way out.”
They drove past a Shell garage and Scarlett wondered if they would be able to refill the Land Cruiser. After they had buried Rémy, they had filled their tanks, using the last of their fuel. The pumps all looked in working order and clearly the electricity supply hadn’t failed, at least in this part of the city. The forecourt was spotless. But if they were going to continue driving, where exactly could they go? Scarlett vaguely remembered old geography lessons. Dubai was on the northern coast of the United Arab Emirates. Oman was next door. Or there was always Iran just opposite, on the other side of the Persian Gulf. It was completely hopeless. They could drive for weeks or months and even assuming they could find more fuel on the way, they wouldn’t necessarily arrive anywhere they wanted to be. Scarlett wondered about Mecca, another sixteen hundred kilometres to the west. They needed a door like the one that had brought them to Cairo. The doors were supposed to be in religious places. Surely they would find one there?