The Power of Five Oblivion

same people who had kept him prisoner in the Castel Nuovo. The Old Ones. They would surely pay a great deal for the return of one of the Five. He examined the young man, half-Italian, half-English, who had brought him this far. Emmanuel was almost asleep, exhausted by the long journey from Naples. Pedro decided that he had to believe in him. Emmanuel seemed genuine enough. And, alone in a foreign country, unable even to speak its language, what choice did he have?
    He felt the same drowsiness stealing over him and rested his head against the window. He and Emmanuel had been lucky to get seats. Every bit of space inside the carriage was taken by people standing, sitting or crouching on the floor. They were moving much faster now. Emmanuel had said this was a direct train. Rome couldn’t be more than an hour away.
    But twenty minutes later, they slowed down and stopped, held up at a red light. It was raining, the grey water travelling horizontally across the windows, splattering down hard on the stony ground. They were in the middle of the countryside with a few houses dotted around them, and as they waited a second train pulled into a siding next to them, so that for a moment the two of them were side by side and quite close. It looked like a cattle train. Half asleep, his head against the window, Pedro saw wooden carriages with heavy padlocks and chains fastening the doors, and tiny windows, barred but without glass. Curiously, there were armed soldiers with capes protecting them from the weather, sitting on the roof, their legs dangling down. That couldn’t be right, could it? Why would you need to guard animals?
    But as he looked, he saw a hand and an arm stretching out of the window exactly opposite him, as if trying to touch his train. The hand opened, the fingers reaching out. And there, on the wrist, he saw what looked like a number, tattooed in black ink.
    Maybe he had imagined it. Maybe it was just a bad dream. Because when he looked a second time, the other train had gone and they were moving once again. But even so, an hour later, when they reached the outskirts of Rome, he still couldn’t put the image out of his mind.

FORTY-TWO
    St Peter’s Square, in the very heart of Rome, was huge, magnificent and anything but square. Pedro had never seen anywhere like it: a great expanse of cobbles with hundreds of columns curving round the edges and two stone fountains on either side of a twenty-metre-tall Egyptian obelisk. Dominating everything – St Peter’s Basilica itself, the most famous cathedral in the world, stood there with more columns, statues and balconies, all crowned by the magnificent dome designed by Michelangelo. Every Easter, the Pope would step out of a window at the front of the cathedral to bless the hundred thousand people who gathered in the square … and there would be room for all of them. Pedro wondered how big this city could be to have so much space in its centre.
    Emmanuel had brought him here because Carla Rivera, the woman who could supposedly help him, lived nearby. They crossed the square together and Pedro found himself gazing at the cathedral, as if his whole life had built up to this moment. He had never seen it before. He had only heard its name for the first time when Matt had told him about it in the dreamworld. And now it was here, right in front of him. He noticed a long line of policemen and soldiers, all dressed in black, stretched out in front of it, and realized that although the square was as crowded as the rest of the city, nobody was being allowed in or out of the building.
    He grabbed hold of Emmanuel. “I want to get closer,” he said. “Why?” Emmanuel was in a hurry. He wanted to see Pedro safely delivered so that he could return to Giovanni and the others.
    “Please…”
    The two of them crossed the square, stopping in front of the wide, marble steps that led up to the front entrance. Pedro was right. The doors were bolted. There were two lines of guards preventing anyone from getting close. What was the point of having a holy place if people weren’t allowed to pray there…
    Perhaps they knew about the magical doors spread all over the planet. This cathedral was at the very centre of the Roman Catholic religion: pilgrims came here from all over the world. So the door had to be here. The guards had found it and they were determined he wouldn’t get anywhere near.
    He would have liked to have explored more but Emmanuel was already getting nervous.