by Stephen Cole
A few minutes? And then I’ll be fine? Tye felt a pit of grief opening up in her chest, but as the minutes crawled she resolved to fill it instead with anger, with hate. She would keep her feelings from this bitch even if nothing else was within her power.
Bree walked up to Tye, peering down like a well-heeled doctor looking in on a patient. Her dyed blonde hair was scraped back, her composure studied and assured. A formidable planner and analyst, Coldhardt had called her.
‘Your friend was talented, but the least important of your group,’ Bree said coldly. ‘I should point out that for all our posturing back at Blackland’s fort, for all Sadie’s runaway enthusiasm, we didn’t want many of you dead. You’re too valuable to us. Which is why, Tye, you were shot with a tranquilliser dart last night and nothing stronger.’
‘Yeah, you wanted us alive.’ Jonah snorted. ‘That’s why the crew came at us with clubs and machetes. Why Saitou shot the hell out of that cargo ship –’
‘And Street, too. They are still working together, you know.’ Bree walked out of Tye’s field of vision towards Jonah. ‘But our men fired plastic bullets, and the crew were ordered to take you alive if they could.’ She paused. ‘You were being covertly filmed from the moment you scaled the Aswang’s hull by night-vision fibre-optic cameras, threaded throughout the superstructure of the ship. I supervised the recording myself.’ Tye could hear the leer in Bree’s voice. ‘And I must say, you all performed beautifully, overcoming the various obstacles we placed in your way.’
‘Why record us?’
‘Your talents are to be auctioned. Naturally prospective buyers will wish to view you in action.’ She crossed back to Tye. ‘Don’t feel left out. We’ll be making a special presentation of your own talents.’
Tye’s mind felt like mud, trampled by thoughts and fears and fresh revelations. ‘Where are Con and Motti?’ she demanded.
‘Safe and snug in a cell of their own. We’re on one of Saitou’s islands in the Philippines, his private retreat, well away from the prying eyes of the world …’ Bree looked back towards Jonah. ‘I thought you two might enjoy a little time alone together. I know how the two of you pine for each other, even when under the same roof.’
Tye looked away, fighting to control her reactions – not to the pathetic jibes, what the hell did they matter? But she kept morbidly picturing poor Patch’s body, lying all alone on that godforsaken deck. Tears were prickling the backs of her eyes but they were going to damn well stay there.
‘Young love is so painful, isn’t it?’ Bree persisted.
‘You don’t know a thing,’ breathed Tye.
Jonah sounded exhausted. ‘Yes, she does. And there’s only one way she can know. The same way she knew when we were boarding the Aswang, and where we planned to exit the hull.’ His voice dropped lower. ‘The dart Sorin shot me with didn’t contain curare, did it?’
‘No. Like Tye’s, it was merely a tranquilliser,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘While you slept, Saitou inserted a microtransmitter into you and that Maya girl, just beneath the skin. Then he performed in our staged little Nomen Oblitum drama as the Scribe’s man-at-arms.’ She smiled. ‘We’ve been listening in to you regularly ever since. The implants convert speech into a digital signal that is recorded and then uploaded to an online decoder whenever a Wi-Fi system comes into range.’
Tye stared up at Bree. ‘But … Coldhardt’s doctor checked Jonah’s and Maya’s wounds. Said they were healing fine even though the darts did hold curare –’
‘Dr Draith is working for me. For twice Coldhardt’s fee, he will say whatever I want him to.’ Bree sounded now like a teacher explaining something simple to a stupid child. ‘You see, Saitou and Street have formed a consortium. A group of very different people all with something in common – the desire to put Coldhardt out of business permanently, and his empire into liquidation. They recruited me to work out the perfect way to do it.’
Tye should’ve felt outraged, but she just felt more numbness.
‘So you hit upon using a Heidel lookalike?’
Bree smiled down at Tye, who stared rigidly back. ‘We scoured half the world to find a man who was suitable in both looks and the right temperament for the part.’
‘Someone who was a psychopath, you mean.’
Bree shrugged. ‘Surgery enhanced his similarity to Heidel. Street and Saitou were on hand to coach him in the old man’s little ways and mannerisms. And a professional voice coach worked wonders with the accent …’
‘What about the hotel room? The stuff we took had Heidel’s DNA all over it, how come your actor didn’t leave bits of himself anywhere? The only other fingerprints on any of the stuff Coldhardt found were –’
‘Hers,’ said Jonah heavily.
‘Our fake was never inside that hotel room.’ Bree’s eyes shone in the golden daylight from outside. ‘I placed the material there myself. Dr Draith treated Heidel in the aftermath of Coldhardt’s attack, you see, and inherited one or two personal belongings …’
‘You knew Coldhardt would be after evidence that Heidel was for real,’ Jonah reasoned. ‘So you took the radio tag from the Guan Yin manuscript to draw Tye and the others to that hotel room.’ He sounded so unengaged, as if his usual zeal to know the truth had died, as if this ordering of the information was purely down to force of habit. ‘You knew they’d suspect a trap, so you gave them one – you put Sadie in the flat opposite.’
Bree smiled and nodded. ‘Distracting you from the possibility of a far greater trap, waiting in the wings …’
Tye barely heard, still clinging on to her cold façade while swallowing back a knot of tears.
‘You let Sorin be killed, you left Sadie to the police …’ Jonah exhaled heavily. ‘You don’t give a damn who or what you sacrifice, do you?’
‘It was imperative you believed yourselves to be ahead of the game,’ Bree said calmly. ‘When poor, talented young Sorin was killed, it sent a powerful message that Nomen Oblitum was not in league with Heidel. When you beat Sadie in London, there had to be visible consequences or you may have suspected a trick. When Heidel burnt a priceless original copy of the Guan Yin manuscript, you and Coldhardt took him and his agenda all the more seriously.’ She gave that sickening smirk of triumph. ‘And before you ask, yes of course we knew there were scans of the cipher backed up in Blackland’s library. Heidel beat the knowledge out of him.’
‘I suppose you would hardly have burnt the book without leaving us a lead to follow,’ Jonah realised.
‘Not after we already killed Professor Morell and blamed it on bungling kids, purely so his laptop could surface for sale on the open market,’ Bree agreed. ‘It was bait we knew Coldhardt could not refuse. Naturally Saitou knew the location of Blackland’s manuscript would be contained in the laptop – Morell had emailed him the precise details the very night he died …’
‘Clever.’ Jonah sighed. ‘But why kill Budd and Clyde in Los Angeles? To make Coldhardt think there were others after the manuscript, to rush him into sending us to Texas?’
‘That’s right,’ Bree agreed. ‘And Coldhardt’s enthusiasm was much appreciated. It meant we didn’t have to endlessly monitor Texan airfields for your arrival, ready to break into Blackland’s fort ahead of you to present Heidel’s premier performance.’
‘You must have been so proud,’ Tye muttered.
‘Street and Saitou certainly were. Only five months of surgery and rehearsal and Heidel was ready to live again …’
Tye glared up at Bree. ‘Except Street almost blew it when he wound up in our surveillance footage.’
‘That was careless of me,’ said a man in the doorway with a low, quiet Scottish accent. He joined Bree in standing beside Tye. She recognised him at once from the surveillance footage in London. Street waggled his fingers at her in a creepy little wave. ‘I couldn’t risk going after you myself to get the tape back, and the only alternative was to send a couple of try-outs hoping to get on my payroll.’
Tye nodde
d. ‘And they messed up totally.’
‘Happily, it made little difference to the way Coldhardt acted,’ said Street coldly. ‘If anything, the thought that his old partners might be banding together to attack made him pitch in with Nomen Oblitum sooner rather than later.’
‘You see, Tye, I haven’t been explaining all this to you and Jonah because I like the sound of my own voice,’ said Bree, ‘or because I need you to see how clever I am. I want you to grasp the situation entirely, so you know … so there can be no doubt at all … that it is not only we who have manipulated you.’
Tye found she was holding her breath as charged seconds passed, like the pause between thunder and lightning.
‘Coldhardt knew that the Aswang was empty. He was sending you into a trap – because the Mage of Nomen Oblitum demanded he hand over his operatives as a gift.’
‘No,’ said Tye simply. ‘He wouldn’t.’
‘The cost of consultation is three-fifths of his fortune, and the five of you were to be given as a gesture of faith,’ Street stated. ‘A down payment.’
Tye’s mind darkened as she remembered Coldhardt’s words in his last briefing: ‘You are prized highly, and always shall be …’ ‘My gift will be found in the hold of a particular cargo ship …’ She closed her eyes. I knew he was holding something back.
‘And Coldhardt is on his way here now. He thinks he’ll be meeting with the real Nomen Oblitum …’ Bree gave a smile of pure pleasure. ‘Looks like you just can’t trust anyone these days – doesn’t it?’
Chapter Twenty
Jonah, strapped tightly into his stretcher and gazing up at the ceiling, suddenly heard the metal door squeal open, wheels on the rocky floor, and the sudden stab of Tye’s voice: ‘Where are you taking me?’
‘Tye!’ Jonah shouted. I’m not losing you too. ‘Tye, I’ll find you.’
Street crossed to him, still all smiles and soft-spoken. ‘That’s very sweet. But you don’t need to worry about her just yet. We want her input for the big moment – Coldhardt’s momentous meeting with the members of Nomen Oblitum.’
‘You mean Saitou in his fright mask and a bunch of actors?’
Street tutted. ‘I’ll have you know, my friend, that the Scribe was once a venerable man. He’s a fallen priest from an occult Egyptian society.’
‘I’d like to see him fall a lot further.’
‘You don’t believe much in magic, do you, Jonah?’ Street leaned in closer. ‘Not like your friend Maya. You know, she’s gone very quiet since her cipherpunk partner upped sticks. She’s just pottering about in Geneva.’ His voice hardened a touch. ‘You said in Zamboanga you were nearing a breakthrough with translating the Bloodline Cipher. What did you tell Maya in that internet café?’
Jonah looked up into Street’s lined face and dark eyes. ‘Of course, you heard the keys clicking but you don’t know what we said …’
Street ignored him. ‘My own experts have studied a secret copy of that manuscript for years and come up with nothing.’
‘So the manuscript that the Scribe showed us was yours?’
‘An inferior version to the one in Blackland’s collection. It contains no appendix …’
Jonah tutted. ‘So you can’t even translate the first bit. Your experts are a bit useless, aren’t they?’
‘That’s why I’ve had to recruit others.’ Street smiled. ‘This year we found a Russian occult specialist who gave us a bit of background detail on the Guan Yin manuscript. He blabbed that Nomen Oblitum possessed a copy, but he died before he could tell us much more.’
Maya’s old tutor, Jonah realised dully. The one who disappeared, never to be seen again.
Street paused. ‘You know, we spent a long time wondering how best to bait the Heidel trap. And when Morell let it be known that Blackland possessed the only other copy of the Guan Yin manuscript in existence, I knew it was the perfect lure.’
‘You posed as NO men and used your knowledge of the manuscript to make Coldhardt believe you knew all its secrets.’ Jonah smiled. ‘But you never got beyond the title page that was cracked already, did you? Why not ask the real Nomen Oblitum? They exist – Maya knows of them. And the real Heidel was dealing with them thirty years ago …’
‘No one can contact them,’ Street murmured. ‘They come to their potential subjects – just as our oh-so-venerable Scribe came to Coldhardt. Now come on, my friend, tell me what you’ve found out about the cipher. We’ll get hold of the scans of the appendix and crack the code ourselves eventually, but why duplicate your own work? If the secret is worth something, maybe we could trade …?’
‘I’m making no deals with you.’
‘Still loyal to your boss, eh? Still think we’re the enemy?’
Jonah snorted softly. ‘Why do you hate Coldhardt so much?’
Street’s gaze drifted, as if he were seeing into the past. ‘We were like brothers,’ he said simply, ‘with Heidel the big man guiding us, the head of the organisation. It was a good life back then, you know. Like a family, but bigger and better … stronger than any family I’ve ever known. We made a pact of blood, uniting us, come what may …’ He smiled thinly, focused again. ‘Well. Old laws or new, Coldhardt figured nothing was strong enough to bind him to a contract. Nothing was ever good enough. He turned on us all – killed Heidel, stole his fortune, destroyed his files, tried to take everything away from us. All that was ours by rights, all that we’d been promised for the future –’
‘Oh, boo-hoo,’ said Jonah.
‘Coldhardt ran before we could kill him and he’s been running ever since. Building up his empire, using the likes of you to do it. Making you feel like family. Exploiting you. But now we’re taking back what’s ours by rights.’
No guesses who wrote the speeches for the Heidel impersonator, Jonah thought.
Street looked down at him with compassion. ‘I’m sorry things have to be this way, kid. I know how you must be hurting.’
‘Maybe you could ease the pain by adopting me,’ suggested Jonah. ‘I’m sure that after I’ve forgiven you and your consortium for killing Patch we could be really close.’
‘Nah, you’ll have to go to the highest bidder. We have costs to recover.’
‘I’m not for sale.’
‘Coldhardt bought you with a single smokestone.’ Street glared down at him. ‘At least it’s honest this way, Jonah. No dressing up the relationship as something it’s not. You’ll slave and steal for some rich son of a bitch and he’ll see you all right.’
‘And if I don’t cooperate?’
‘There are all kinds of implants.’ His smile was chilling. ‘Some can be made to hurt.’
Jonah looked away. ‘I don’t care what you do to me.’
‘Which is why we’re looking to auction you in twos – so the safety of one hinges on the good behaviour of the other. You and Tye could be together, doing what you do best for somebody new. Or you can sulk and say you won’t, and Tye gets to learn what pain really means. Just think about it a wee while.’ Street turned and walked away. ‘Con and Motti are thinking about it already. They send you their regards.’
Jonah said nothing. The door in the wall slammed shut and the key turned behind him but he kept on struggling in the stretcher. He knew he couldn’t afford to stop.
He and his friends were captured. Patch was dead. Coldhardt had sold them out. But no one was going to profit from today. No one would be scoring any victories.
He’d see these bastards burn first.
Tye was wheeled along in her stretcher by Bree, through an exquisite series of landscaped tunnels. It felt as though she were inside some enormous open-air temple, sculpted rather than built. The weather blew in through splits and holes in the tunnels, warm and fresh against the stone cool of the place. The crash of the sea, or a bright glimpse of shimmering blue, was never far away, and Tye supposed their path was following the coastline of the island.
She felt weirdly empty, but quite calm. It was like the scale of her grief
had scared off her emotions, sent them all into hiding. Instead, in that numb inner landscape, the little things seemed magnified. She had an itch on her thigh she was desperate to scratch. She could smell her own sweat. Her mouth tasted sour, and she longed for the Tic-Tacs back in her hotel room at Zamboanga. Tye thought of her meagre belongings there. The staff would think they’d done a runner to get out of paying. They’d never know she could have bought that whole hotel if she’d wanted …
It was only then that her thoughts turned to all the things she had back in Geneva – the car, the yacht, the breathtaking view from her window. Stuff she would never see again.
And right now all she wanted was some mouth-wash and Jonah’s hand to hold.
That and Patch back.
Her thoughts shied from Coldhardt.
It was because of him Patch was dead.
And yet Patch had stayed with Coldhardt because of Tye, and Jonah, and Motti and Con – because of family. So maybe they all shared in the guilt. Each of them had faced death so many times; it came with the job, they each went into it with their eyes open. Like soldiers, she supposed. You just never, ever really think it will happen to you …
Like when you love someone and think it will last for ever. But then it doesn’t, and your whole world splits apart.
‘I will see you again,’ Coldhardt had told them, so definite as they left. She’d actually found it comforting at the time. But all the time he’d meant he’d see them here, locked up and ready for auction.
‘Ah. Here is our living lie detector.’
Tye recognised the voice of Heidel – the impostor. Bree stopped pushing and a moment later the old man’s head appeared, looming over her. She saw his eyes were no longer rheumy, they were clear. Trick contact lenses, she supposed, to make him seem way older than he could’ve been.
When Heidel spoke again, the voice was a little higher and softer – his real voice, presumably. ‘You know, you hurt me when you threw me over your shoulder on the boat.’