Three days had passed since then. Now, sitting in the plane, Matt wondered why he had been so decisive.
Maybe the twelve members of the Nexus had been right. His life was completely tangled up with the second gate and there seemed to be no escaping it. Or was there part of him that genuinely wanted to help, to fight back against an ancient enemy? Matt wasn’t sure. All he knew was that he was sweating and felt sick. As the engines began to roar in the build-up to take-off, he was certain they would fall off the wings. And how could this huge machine with its six hundred passengers, suitcases, meal trolleys and all the rest of it possibly stay up in the air? Matt had only ever flown twice in his entire life and that had been short hops to Marseilles and Malaga with his parents, when he was young. This flight was going to last seventeen hours! He wasn’t afraid of what he might find in Peru, but he was certainly afraid of flying there.
Twenty minutes later, the 747 was well above cloud level, already leaving behind the west coast of England. A stewardess came up to them with a menu.
“Would you like a drink, Mr Carter?” she asked.
It took Matt a moment to realize that she was talking to them. Paul and Robert Carter. Two brothers travelling together. Those were the names on the false passports they had been given.
“I’ll have a beer, thanks,” Richard said.
“Just some water for me,” Matt added.
They were travelling in business class, close to the front of the plane. The tickets had cost thousands of pounds, but then the Nexus had been ready to pay millions for the diary; they obviously weren’t short of cash. Matt settled back in his seat. He had a personal TV with a choice of about ten films as well as a selection of computer games. Richard had also bought him a book and some magazines. But he didn’t feel like doing anything. Sitting there, suspended in the air somewhere above the Irish Sea, he felt empty, disconnected.
“So do you want to talk about it?” Richard asked.
“What?”
“The door. What you saw on the other side.”
Matt shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it. William Morton chose the church because of something he’d read in the diary. He used the door as a test, to prove I was who he thought I was.”
Richard nodded. “If anyone else went through the door, they’d find themselves standing in a puddle in East London.”
“But I went somewhere else. I’m not even sure I was in England.” Matt thought for a moment. “Do you remember what it said on that news programme? The one we saw on the DVD? It said something about an Internet within the church…”
“It was one of the things in the diary.”
“Well, maybe that’s what it meant. When you sit at a computer, you can click a mouse and go where you like. You can link up with another computer anywhere in the world. Maybe it’s the same sort of thing… only for real.”
“That’s great!” Richard smiled. “So all you have to do is find another church door in Peru and maybe you can go home without having to pay for the return flight.”
The stewardess came with the drinks. Sunlight was streaming in through the windows and the smell of lunch was already spreading through the cabin from the galley just behind them. Only four months ago, Matt had been living with his aunt in Ipswich, failing at school, struggling from Monday to Friday and wasting time at weekends. And now he was here. It was hard to believe.
Richard seemed to pick up on his thoughts. “You didn’t have to do this,” he said.
“I think I did, Richard.” Matt gazed out of the window. There was nothing to look at. Just the clouds in an empty sky. “Miss Ashwood knew it. Even William Morton. I’m part of this and I think I always have been. I tried to pretend otherwise and I nearly got a whole lot of people killed.” He sighed. “You don’t have to be here. But I think I do.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not going anywhere without me.”
“Then we’re stuck in it together.”
The flight seemed endless. Matt watched one film, then another. He read part of his book. He tried to sleep but without success. The noise of the engines was all around him and he couldn’t forget the fact that he was hanging in space with the ground far too far away. They landed at Miami and spent two hours in a characterless transit lounge while the plane refuelled. By now Matt’s inner clock was telling him that it was late in the evening – but it was still light outside. The entire day had been stretched out of shape and he felt exhausted.
They took off again and suddenly the weather turned bad. The sky was dark and a fork of lightning cracked downwards, flashing against the silver skin of the 747. They hit a patch of turbulence and Matt felt his stomach heave as the floor momentarily disappeared from beneath his feet. Inside the business section, the lights had been dimmed. A soft, yellow glow illuminated the passengers, sitting in their seats, trying to look relaxed but at the same time gripping the arm rests with all their strength. Nobody was talking. But as every buffet of wind made the plane shudder, and the tone of the engines rose and fell in the swirling air pockets, one or two of them swore softly or even muttered a silent prayer.
And somehow, in the middle of all this, Matt finally managed to fall asleep. Not that it felt that way. One moment he was next to Richard, half concentrating on yet another film and counting the minutes until they were back on the ground, the next he was somewhere else.
The island. He recognized it at once and knew it so well that he had to remind himself that he had never actually been there, only ever visited it in his dreams. There was the tower of black, broken rock. And there was the sea, as ugly as liquid tar, spreading out all around it. There was no wind, but the clouds were still racing across a darkening sky. Matt wondered what it all meant. Why was he here? Why did he so frequently return?
He looked down and saw the strange reed boat that had been making its way towards him the last time he came here. It had reached the edge of the island and sat, abandoned, on the grey sand.
“Matt!”
Someone had called his name. He turned round and saw the boy from the boat, standing on a rocky shelf just below him. The two of them were about the same age but the boy was smaller and thinner than him, wearing clothes that were little more than rags. Matt opened his mouth to answer. He knew who the boy was and why he was there. He had come to collect him, to take him to the three others who were still waiting on the mainland, just half a mile away.
But the words never came. There was a scream. Matt looked up just in time to see the swan plunging out of the sky, its neck straining forward. It came at him with all the power of a plane crash. Even as he looked, the swan drew closer, its gaping beak filling his vision as if it were about to swallow him whole.
The other boy cried out. Matt felt himself falling.
There was a bump and he opened his eyes.
Richard was sitting next to him.
They had arrived in Lima.
It seemed to Matt that Aeropuerto Jorge Chavez was only half built. After the bright lights and bustle of Heathrow, with its crowds milling between the duty-free shops as if every day was Christmas, he had arrived at a bare, cheerless space where the passengers were invited to queue up at a row of cubicles manned by border guards in black-and-white uniforms. The ceiling of the arrivals lounge was missing tiles and none of the fans were working. A few potted plants sat wilting in the sticky heat. It wasn’t so much welcome to Peru as welcome to nowhere in particular.
Matt was feeling tired and grimy as he waited in line with Richard – looking just the same – next to him. But there was something else. As he watched the passengers moving ahead of him and heard the clunk of the passport stamps as they were admitted into the country, he began to feel nervous. It was only now that he realized that he and Richard were committing a criminal offence. They were travelling with false passports. He supposed the Nexus knew what it was doing, but even so it suddenly seemed less of a good idea.