Evil Star

recognized one of them. It was Tarrant, the assistant commissioner.
    He looked grim.
    Richard Cole arrived a few minutes later, bursting in with Fabian.
    By now the body had been covered. The con-gregation had left.
    More police officers had arrived. Matt was sitting on his own, holding the flower which had already begun to wilt. He was very still. There was blood on one of his sneakers.
    "Are you okay?" Richard asked. His face was filled with horror.
    "Yeah. Sure." Matt wondered if he was in shock. He didn't feel anything. "I didn't get the diary," he said. "Who-ever killed him took it."
    "How did they know he was here?" Fabian muttered. "Nobody knew Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star about the meeting. He told only us."
    "Somebody knew," Matt said. He waved a hand in the direction of the dead man. "They took the diary. He had it with him when we met but just now I looked and it wasn't there."
    "To hell with the diary," Richard said. “You were with him. You could have been killed, too." He paused and frowned. "What happened?" he asked. "Did you see who it was?"
    "No. I was out in the cloister. He made me get him this." Matt held up the flower.
    Now it was Fabian's turn to look puzzled. "What clois-ter?" he asked.
    "The church has a cloister," Matt said. "Morton asked me to go there. He said it was some sort of test, but I think he was lying."
    "This church has no cloister," Fabian said.
    "It's through there." Matt looked in the direction of the door.
    "Let's go out," Richard said. “You need some air."
    "There is no cloister," Fabian insisted.
    Angrily, Matt stood up and walked over to the door. "It's through here," he said.
    He opened the door. And stopped dead.
    There was no cloister on the other side. There were no flowers, no fountain, no monks. Instead, he found himself looking at an alleyway lined with dustbins and, on the other side, a grimy backyard filled with rubble and broken cement.
    He looked down at the flower in his hand and then threw it down as if it were scalding him. The flower lay floating in a puddle of brown rainwater. There was no other color anywhere around.

    Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star

    Chapter 7 Danger Area
    In the end, it all seemed too easy.
    Matt didn't want any part of it. He would have liked to forget the Nexus, the Old Ones, William Morton, the diary, the second gate, and all the other weird things that had somehow closed in on him and taken over his life. Cer-tainly, he had no great desire to visit Peru. And yet, here he was at midday, sitting on a British Airways jumbo jet on the runway at Heathrow Airport, Flight 207 to Lima via Miami. Once again, he got the feeling that he hadn't chosen to be here. It had just happened.
    After the death of the bookseller at St. Meredith's church, there had been another meeting of the Nexus — and that was when they had put it to him.
    "Matt, we want to send you to Peru." This time, Susan Ashwood had done most of the talking. Maybe they felt she knew him best.
    "We've lost the diary. It wasn't your fault, but it's a catastrophe. It means that whoever was bidding for it in South America probably has it, or will have it soon. The diary will show them how to find the gate. Worse than that, it may show them how to open it."
    "There's nothing Matt can do," Richard said. "You send him all the way across the world . . . what's the point?"

    "I can't really answer that, Mr. Cole. How can I explain? Imagine this were a game of chess. Losing Morton was like losing a pawn.
    Now, sending you to Peru, it's as if we're advancing a knight. In the Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star end, it may be too late. It may not help. But at least it shows we're still on the attack."
    "The boy and the gate are linked," Natalie Johnson said. Matt could see that the American woman had already made up her mind. "He's part of it. Something is going to happen in Peru — and whatever it is, he should be there."
    "Well, Peru's a big country. Where's he supposed to begin?"
    "In the capital. Lima."
    "Why there?"
    "We may have one lead," Tarrant explained. "William Morton had his cell phone with him when he was mur-dered. Fortunately for us, his killer left it behind. I've looked at it, and it seems he made a dozen calls in the week before he died. Some of them to us, of course. But three of them were to a number in Lima."
    "Salamanda News International," the Frenchman said.
    "What's that?" Richard asked.
    "It's one of the biggest