by Stephen Cole
‘No alarm bells ringing here,’ she said, almost reluctantly. ‘No real hesitation in Maya’s replies, no overly defensive responses, nothing to suggest she’s recalling what she’s already said ahead of answering, plenty of eye contact …’ Tye paused. There was a lot more to her human polygraph act than simply reading body language. That stuff she thought of as supporting evidence for her gut instinct; the same instinct that had kept her alive in her smuggling days. But Tye knew Coldhardt preferred opinions to be backed up with facts, so she continued with the surface stuff: ‘Maya usually glanced to her left when recalling precise detail. As a right-handed person, she’d be more likely to look to her right if she was making it up.’
Coldhardt nodded brusquely. ‘In short, then, you would say the signs add up to someone who is telling the truth?’
‘Yes,’ said Tye.
‘Good,’ said Coldhardt. ‘That tallies with my own observations. Nothing in Maya’s behaviour so far has seemed suspicious. But for the time being she will continue to be looked after in the Chamonix safe house, away from the heart of my organisation. And I will continue my excavations into her past.’ He nodded decisively. ‘They may throw light on her future.’
‘I guess with a man who’s been dead thirty years back on the scene,’ said Motti, ‘it’s not a great time to take chances on stray girls.’
‘Like each of you in the past, she must prove herself. She and Jonah can work together on translating the Guan Yin manuscript files.’
Nice and cosy. Tye frowned. ‘Is the safe house secure enough? I mean, if you’re expecting possible trouble –’
‘Entrance to the block is secured by fingerprint and retinal scan,’ Motti informed her. ‘And the windows are made with aluminium oxynitride, capable of keeping out point-fifty calibre armour piercing rounds. Each room is fitted with panic screens – vanadium steel shutters that block the doorway in response to a key phrase –’
‘It’s secure,’ Patch translated.
‘At all times there will be back-up for Jonah present in the safe house.’ Coldhardt looked at Tye. ‘Con can remain there overnight, then the rest of you for twelve-hour shifts. Devise a rota.’
She nodded. Starting with me. ‘Got it.’
‘For now, you may all go and rest.’
They rose to go.
‘One last thing. The acquisition of the Guan Yin manuscript marks the starting point of a journey … a dangerous journey, no doubt, but one that may prove to be the most important of my life, and of yours.’ Coldhardt looked at each of them in turn. ‘If Heidel has truly returned … if this proof of which he speaks means what I think it does …’ He trailed off, eyes clouding as he stared into the darkness of the TV screens. ‘We must be strong. All of us.’
Tye swapped uneasy glances with Motti and Patch. They lingered for any more pronouncements, but Coldhardt remained silent. The hum of the strip lights, the distant rush of the air-con systems, all the background noise of the hub seemed somehow alien and amplified as they waited.
‘Class dismissed,’ Motti breathed at last, and led the way over to the lift that would take them to daylight. Tye looked back at Coldhardt, their charismatic leader and mentor. Right now he seemed just another lonely old man, locked into his thoughts, mourning times past.
Chapter Eight
Jonah shut the blinds on the stunning scenery outside with a nick of nostalgia, smiling as the glow from his monitor lit the room instead of the sun. How many summer days had he spent indoors, engrossed in that digital view while the rest of the world basked in sunshine?
The safe house boasted a desktop PC with multi-core CPU. While Con amused herself with a family-sized bag of crisps and the TV, he’d tweaked the motherboard to run faster and installed a water-cooling kit to stop it overheating as a result of the increased speed. Then, as Coldhardt had requested, he’d hacked into the global network of RFID receivers.
‘What’s that you’re doing?’
Jonah looked up to find Maya had come in, watching the screen with interest.
‘A job for Coldhardt.’
‘Obviously.’
He kept tapping away at the keyboard. ‘This piece of code is designed to worm its way into every airport, library and high-street store that uses the RFID system. The receivers will go on functioning normally, but in addition …’ He paused. ‘In addition they’ll be scanning for the transponder-tag inside the Guan Yin manuscript.’
Maya frowned. ‘Surely the manuscript was incinerated?’
‘It is just possible Heidel switched the manuscript for something else.’ He looked at her. ‘Suppose there’s no chance Heidel didn’t know about the tags?’
‘No, he was quizzing Blackland about them when –’ Maya broke off for a few moments. ‘Blackland was using a new, advanced tagging system, you see. Tiny, very powerful chips well ahead of anything on the market, carefully concealed within each book.’
‘Well, suppose we might just see what turns up.’ Jonah noticed she was holding a DVD in her hand. ‘Movie?’
‘Guan Yin manuscript.’ She loaded up her DVD containing the high-res scans of the ancient vellum pages. In moments, a pin-sharp image of a single page of parchment appeared on the screen. It was covered in small, neat writing in a language Jonah had never seen before. A scratchy drawing of what could have been a tree occupied one corner, with writing bunched up all around it.
Jonah looked more closely. ‘Looks like there’s a lot of character repetition …’ He read the file number. ‘Hey, this page is from the final quire of the manuscript, isn’t it? What about the rest of the book?’
‘I always read the end of a book first,’ she protested, pixie-eyes dancing. ‘Don’t you?’
Jonah gave a definite shake of his head. ‘I start at the beginning.’
‘Well, I’m itching to get to the big finish. Still, if you insist …’
Jonah watched as she took the mouse and opened up another file. Her manner seemed far less formal now it was just the two of them, as if she felt able to relax a little. That’s cool, thought Jonah.
‘This is from an early page of manuscript,’ she announced. ‘Take a close look and tell me what you see …’
Jonah pushed his long fringe aside, scanned the text on the screen. ‘It’s maybe a different language?’
‘Right.’ She looked impressed. ‘There seem to be two distinct languages used in the book – one for most of the manuscript, the other purely for the appendix – the final twenty-five sheets of the manuscript. See, the characters are repeated more frequently, the words themselves – if they are words – seem far longer …’
‘A verbose cipher, maybe? One which substitutes several ciphertext characters for one plaintext character …’ Jonah looked between the two pages on the screen with some trepidation. ‘I have to say I’ve never seen an alphabet like either of them before.’
‘This manuscript is one of a kind,’ Maya agreed. ‘Some nineteenth-century scholars thought it might be a hoax – just a jumble of made-up letters. But the script flows very smoothly, as if the author understood what they were writing.’
‘And in any case, you said the words and characters are repeated in ways that match the patterns of natural languages.’
‘Which would be next to impossible to fake,’ Maya agreed.
Jonah paused. ‘I’m enjoying this.’
Maya looked puzzled. ‘What?’
‘You know … this.’ Jonah felt slightly selfconscious and began to wish he hadn’t started the conversation. ‘Sparking off someone else’s ideas, sharing possible approaches. Face to face, I mean,’ he said quickly.
Maya smiled. ‘Yes. It is very … stimulating.’
Something about the way she said it made him blush. ‘Um …’ He cleared his throat and looked firmly at the screen, trying to get back to business. ‘Have those characters been traced over?’ he said. ‘Looks like two different inks have been used.’
Maya nodded, serious again. ‘The main part of the man
uscript was written in tempera paint – parts have faded over the years. Certain words and symbols look darker throughout because they’ve been retouched – probably around the same time the appendix was added. The inks are very similar.’
‘Any idea how many years passed between the original and the retouching?’
‘Hard to say,’ Maya admitted. ‘But the later characters are drawn as fluidly as the originals. It could have been the original author, coming back to his work, or at least someone who was familiar with that “alphabet”.’
‘Let’s hope so. ’Cause if he traced any of the symbols wrongly …’ Jonah enlarged a section where two characters in the middle of a word had been overwritten. The original ink was just barely visible beneath the darker strokes. ‘It’s going to mess up any text analysis we try.’
‘Speaking of text analysis … how’re you with Chinese languages?’
‘Huh?’
Maya leaned forward to enlarge part of a page, affording Jonah a glimpse down her top as she did so. He saw the edge of a tattoo peeping over the top of her black bra and found himself staring. God, I’m turning into Patch, he thought, looking quickly at the screen. He forced himself to focus on the weird symbol Maya had highlighted, drawn in muddy red ink.
‘These exotic symbols are the only things common to both sections of the manuscript,’ she explained, apparently oblivious to any effect she’d had on him. ‘They’re different to any of the characters in the body of the text, and often written in a different ink.’
‘Could be headings, or chapter titles?’
‘Or maybe signifying sections of a separate code book that can translate the pages.’ She enlarged the symbol still further and looked at him, her grey gaze intent. ‘The drawing of Chinese goddess Guan Yin on the title page could be a big clue. Up until the last few hundred years, more than half of the world’s literature was written in Chinese characters.’
‘Pictograms and ideograms. Symbols representing ideas or things rather than actual words.’ Jonah nodded. ‘Well, I’ve broken hieroglyph codes before. They’re usually quite logical once you get into the swing of them. What do you think this one means?’
‘It looks to me like the character ròu, inverted then turned upside down.’ Maya drew the pictogram, which to Jonah resembled a box with most of its bottom missing and two up-pointing arrowheads inside it. She looked at him, something unfathomable simmering in her eyes. ‘It’s supposed to represent a hacked-open carcass. It means meat or flesh.’ She scrolled to the bottom of the page, where a fainter symbol sat close beside a crude drawing of someone screaming. ‘And if we invert and rotate this symbol seventy degrees, it starts to look a bit like the pictogram for ji – meaning temple, or offer sacrifice to.’
‘So – “flesh offer sacrifice to temple”. Sounds fun,’ Jonah said wryly. ‘What was that you were saying about not believing those lurid tabloid takes on black magic?’
‘There are many kinds of sacrifice.’ Maya paused, and when she spoke again her voice held a more challenging tone. ‘Look at the way you and your friends have given yourselves to Coldhardt.’
Jonah frowned. ‘You what?’
‘Everyone sacrifices their brainpower, their free time, their physical presence to get something back, whether it’s an education, a regular pay cheque, power, respect …’ Maya looked at him. ‘What you do is different. You’re prepared to sacrifice your lives for Coldhardt.’
‘What would you know about it?’ said Jonah defensively.
‘You offer up your flesh and bones in his cause …’ Maya went on. ‘And do you ever stop to think that some day that offering may be collected?’
Jonah shifted uncomfortably. He wasn’t used to conversations like this. He resorted to flippancy. ‘God, you’re a real barrel of laughs, aren’t you, Maya? How’d you get so happy?’
‘Knowledge makes me happy. Cracking codes. Learning secrets.’ In the light of the screen, her freckles looked grey, like dust motes settled on her skin. ‘How about you? Does your life make you happy, Jonah?’
The challenge prickled at him. ‘I guess. OK, fair enough, I’m not happy with some of the situations I pitch up in,’ he admitted. ‘But to leave my friends would make me more unhappy. Besides, when I joined up I wasn’t exactly turning my back on a brilliant future. I was in a Young Offenders’ Institution, a kind of prison – no visitors, no meaning, no hope.’
‘So Coldhardt has given you meaning in your life …’ She grinned unexpectedly. ‘As well as cool visitors like me of course.’ She paused. ‘But what about hope?’
‘I hope I’ll be around long enough to enjoy what I’ve got,’ he joked. ‘Because at the end of the day, I’m bloody lucky.’ He gestured to the computer. ‘I get to do what I love, what I do best, and I get rewarded for it – tons of cash, a fantastic lifestyle, and friends I can count on for the first time.’ He leaned in closer for emphasis. ‘Before I met Coldhardt, I was just living. But this last year, I’ve been really alive.’
Maya folded her arms. ‘Nothing like risking your life to make you appreciate it all the more, huh?’
‘Patch once said we’ll live for ever or die trying.’ He met her gaze. ‘I’m with him on that one. It’s the only way to get through the days.’
‘Maybe.’ Maya’s cool grey eyes didn’t falter. ‘What about Coldhardt, fount of your happiness – will he live for ever?’
Jonah half smiled. ‘He’s working on it.’
There was a pause and then another unexpected grin dimpled Maya’s cheeks, easing the tension. ‘I’m glad. After all, for ever might just be long enough to crack the end of this manuscript …’
Jonah shook his head. ‘That’ll have to wait. Right now, the offering I’ve got to make to Coldhardt is a decrypted plaintext version of the title page.’
‘He asked you just for that?’ Maya blinked. ‘Why?’
‘To show we can do it, I suppose. Or maybe because he prefers to start at the beginning and move on, like me.’
‘At his age, I’d have thought he’d be more interested in endings …’ Maya leaned back in her chair. ‘Oh, well. Guess it’s your lucky day. We can give him the title page straight away.’
Jonah stared at her. ‘What?’
‘It was translated way back, by a clerk in the museum that held the manuscript before it was stolen and the whole place burned down. The clerk’s notes were folded up and placed within the manuscript. Blackland found them there in the monastery.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us this sooner?’ Jonah demanded.
‘It hardly counts as part of the manuscript. It’s thought that the cover page is a later addition to the whole, possibly sixteenth century. And it’s encoded in a completely different way to the rest of the manuscript, more of a word puzzle. The characters of an invented language had to be transposed into Latin and then only certain letters chosen –’
‘OK, OK. So what does it say?’
‘How does it go, now …’ Maya cast her eyes upwards, as if remembering, and Jonah had the feeling she was teasing him. ‘The life of a creature is in the blood. Through the mercy and purity of Guan Yin, who gave up her eyes so her father might see, this Bloodline Cipher is disposed to thee. Thy flesh be stitched with threads immortal, they hold fast though the blood sweat fastens.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Just a bit cryptic, then.’ Jonah frowned. ‘Do you have the scan of the title page? I’d like to run my own decryption just to be sure.’
‘I did the same,’ she said approvingly. ‘We can compare all three versions.’
He grinned at her. ‘And that way, we needn’t tell Coldhardt the work had been done for us already. Nice one!’
He rose to go. Maya caught hold of his hand and looked up at him hopefully. ‘So will I get to meet your mysterious Coldhardt? He sounds like he’d fit right in with my crowd back home.’
‘He probably would,’ Jonah agreed, gently freeing his fingers. He liked Maya but not i
n that way. ‘We’ll see what he says. I’ll go and call him.’
Crossing the room, Jonah could feel Maya’s eyes on his back. And as he closed the door behind him, he hesitated. You might just fit in with our crowd too, he thought. A code-cracker with a passionate, in-depth knowledge of all that creepy stuff Coldhardt’s into …
He headed for the phone, a mixed-up feeling inside him. Maybe I could find myself leaving here sooner than I thought.
*
Tye sat on a brown, cracked leather sofa in the hangout, brooding on all that had happened.
A guy who’s supposed to be dead, clinging to life for thirty years? She chewed her lip. Suddenly back and stoked for revenge? It’s got to be a wind-up.
What was this guy hoping to achieve?
The sumptuous sofas were arranged around a full-sized snooker table. Drinks and snacks dispensers lined the walls along with arcade video games, pinball tables and fruit machines, hemming in their chill-space with walls of lurid light and colour. There was even a gleaming chrome coffee bar. A room to the left housed a miniature cinema – only eight seats but a full-sized screen; while to the right were two rooms each with an enormous HD TV – one for watching and one for gaming on.
Right now, neither were in use. Patch stood at the coffee bar in a cloud of dusted chocolate, finishing off a cappuccino with hazelnut syrup, while Motti lay sprawled on the sofa beside her with a beer and a comic book. The hangout seemed so big and empty with just the three of them here tonight.
‘It was such a weird atmosphere in there today,’ said Tye quietly. ‘Do you believe this Heidel guy’s for real?’
‘I didn’t see much of the guy, remember?’ Motti pointed to the purple swelling like a tattoo on his temple. ‘But Coldhardt doesn’t normally make mistakes. If he thought he killed the guy …’
‘I wish I knew why he seems so rattled by the whole thing.’ Tye slumped down a little lower in the sofa. ‘How many people do you think he’s killed over the years?’