“You…” Richard swore viciously.
Fabian looked around. “Where is everyone?” he asked. “There were a whole lot of people here a few minutes ago.”
“When did you start working for Salamanda?” Matt asked.
“Oh – a long time ago. Before Raven’s Gate. As a matter of fact, he’s my publisher. He published two of my books and he asked me to meet him. He said he was very interested in some of the things I was writing about. Ancient history. Nazca. The Nexus was interested in me too. They asked me to join them. But I’d already made my choice…”
“Why?
“Because I want to be on the winning side. The world’s going to change, you see. Everything’s going to change. And the question you have to ask yourself is – do you want to spend the rest of your life in misery and pain or do you want to be with the winners? That was how Mr Salamanda put it to me. He persuaded me that the Nexus didn’t have a chance. I mean, it had always been predicted that the Old Ones would return and take over the world, so what was the point of trying to fight against it?”
“You gave him the diary.”
“I told him about the meeting at St Meredith’s. And I told him where you were, when you called in from Cuzco. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t want you to get hurt – but it was all or nothing.”
Fabian stood up, took a drink from the bottle, then went over to one of the largest screens. Matt had noticed it when they came in. It seemed to be showing some sort of radar signals. There were about a hundred dots, black on white, all of them static. But high up in the left-hand corner, a single dot was moving slowly across, travelling about a centimetre every few minutes.
“There it is,” Fabian said. “Cygnus. The swan. You have to admire Salamanda’s genius. I mean, there’s a guy with a head on his shoulders!” He laughed briefly to himself. “He’s using an artificial star to unlock the gate.” There was a time code at the bottom of the screen. It showed 22:19:58 and the numbers were rapidly changing as the seconds ticked away. “It’ll be in place in less than two hours from now and there’s absolutely nothing you can do,” he mumbled. “Then it’ll all be over…”
“We can still stop it,” Matt said.
“No. You see…”
But before he could say any more, there was a crash as a door burst inwards and a man reeled into the room. It was Rodriguez. He had obviously been involved in the thick of the fighting. His face was grey, streaked with dirt and sweat. He had a gun in one hand. His other hand was clutching his arm. He had been wounded. There was blood seeping through the jacket of his uniform. Matt would never know if he had come in here to hide or to look for him. Either way, he had found him.
“You!” The single word was spat out with a mixture of hatred and amusement. Rodriguez straightened himself and raised the gun, aiming at Matt.
Matt said nothing. He was standing just a few metres away. The appearance of Captain Rodriguez had changed everything. He and Richard were defenceless. Fabian wasn’t going to help them. There was nobody else in the room. What could he do? A thought flashed through his mind. Forrest Hill. The bully – Gavin Taylor – holding a glass in his hand. Matt had used his power. It had been an accident, but still it had been unforgettable. He had made the glass and the chandelier explode, simply by thinking about it.
Could he do the same now?
“You got away from me in Lima,” Rodriguez said. “And again in Cuzco. But there will be no third time. This is where it ends.”
“Leave him alone!” It was Richard who had spoken and for a moment the gun turned on him. If he tried to run forward, Rodriguez would shoot him and watch him die before he turned the gun on Matt.
“You are… the journalist?” Somehow the policeman had recognized him. “Do you want to die first or do you want to die second? Tell me! I can arrange it…”
Desperately, Matt tried to focus on the gun. Why couldn’t he do it? What was the point of having some sort of hidden power if he didn’t know how to use it? It should have been easy. A single blast of energy and the gun should have been spinning over to the other side of the room. Along with the man who held it.
But it wasn’t happening.
Rodriguez was aiming the gun at his heart. Matt could almost feel the policeman’s finger tightening on the trigger.
And then Fabian stepped into the line of fire.
“You don’t have to kill them,” he said.
“Get out of the way!” Rodriguez commanded.
Fabian was walking towards him. “No, no, no,” he was saying. “There’s no need for this. You don’t have to kill anyone. We’ve won! It’s what Salamanda always said. In an hour, the Old Ones will be here and the whole world will be ours. I’m sorry, Captain Rodriguez. I don’t care what you say. I’m not going to stand here and watch you shoot a child.”
“Get out of my way!”
“No!” Fabian had reached him. He was unsteady on his feet – from the drink or exhaustion. But he was between Rodriguez and Matt, his hand pressing down on the policeman’s arm. “Salamanda promised me the boy wouldn’t be hurt,” he said.
“Salamanda lied!” Rodriguez laughed and pulled the trigger. Matt flinched. Fabian was thrown backwards but somehow remained standing. He looked down. Blood was gushing out of him. His shirt and his trousers were already saturated. Then he collapsed quite suddenly, as if every nerve in his body had been whipped out of him.
Rodriguez took aim at Matt a second time.
And then there was an explosion, much louder than the gunshot, but outside the room. Matt looked up.
The Incas had blown up the radio mast. He had no idea how they had done it, but it was clear that they had come to the compound with more than bolas, spears and the rest of it. One of them must have brought a quantity of plastic explosive. Matt saw everything quite clearly through the glass dome. There was a great flash of light as the steel mast was cut in half. Flames leapt up. And then the top of the mast came loose, separating from the bottom. Taking three of the satellite dishes with it, it keeled over to one side. And suddenly the very top of the mast, where it tapered to a point, was travelling down, like a spear thrown from the sky. As Richard and Matt dived to one side, it smashed through the glass and kept coming. All of Rodriguez’s concentration had been on Matt. He had been perhaps half a second away from shooting him. He hadn’t seen what had happened until it was too late.
Half a ton of steel girders, cables and satellite dishes crashed into the control room. Rodriguez was directly underneath the dome. He didn’t even have time to scream as a massive pile of metal and glass slammed into him, obliterating him utterly. Matt hit the floor and kept sliding. It seemed to him that the whole room had exploded. The noise was deafening. A hundred splinters sprayed into his shoulders and back. He could smell burning. Everything had gone dark.
Silence.
Weakly, he tried to stand up but found that his leg wouldn’t obey him. For a moment he was terrified. Had he been crushed under the weight of the radio mast?
“Richard…!” he shouted.
“Over here!” Richard sounded a long way away.
Slowly Matt picked himself up. Apart from a few superficial cuts and scratches, he hadn’t been hurt. Richard was also getting to his feet. He was covered in glass. It was in his hair and on his shoulders and there was a cut on his forehead. But he was all right too.
And then the door opened and Pedro came running in. He had his slingshot in one hand. There was a ferocity in his face that Matt had never seen before. Atoc was with him. Matt was relieved to see that both of them were uninjured.
“It is over,” Atoc said. “Salamanda’s people run. The mast is down. There is no more they can do from here.”
“Then we did it!” Matt said.
“We have won!” Atoc smiled tiredly.
“You’re wrong…”
The voice came from the middle of the wreckage. Matt looked past the dead body of the police captain and saw Fabian painfully trying to ease himself into a sitting position. He was very pale. It was impossible to say how much blood he had lost, but most of his suit was crimson.