Thieves Like Us 01 - Thieves Like Us

by Stephen Cole

  But when the battered van drew up outside the castle at last, she knew at once that something was wrong. The gravel in the driveway was churned up, as though a car had left in a hurry. One of the great wrought iron gates stood ajar.

  Patch had noticed too. He flung open the van door. ‘Coldhardt?’ he yelled, pelting out into the grounds. ‘Coldhardt!’

  She raced after him, catching him up as he stood panting and anxious in front of the retinal scanner. He winked into it, got the match, and they held hands as the lift descended, holding their breaths too.

  ‘Oh, God …’ breathed Tye.

  The hub – Coldhardt’s sanctum and sacred heart, wherever the location – had been trashed. While Patch lingered in the doorway, Tye walked slowly inside. Cabinets had been tipped over, spewing files and papers. One of the screens on the wall was cracked, another smashed right open. The table was overturned. A bloody handprint was smeared on the wall.

  ‘Someone’s got him,’ she whispered.

  ‘How could anyone get in here?’ said Patch.

  ‘I don’t know. But he’s gone.’

  Patch looked at her. ‘Then … we’re on our own.’

  Tye stared at Coldhardt’s desk. The computer had been swept away, and what was left of the smashed-up statuette was standing in its place. She advanced on it slowly. The demon crouched alone in placid marble, its human foe ripped away along with most of its scaly stomach.

  She saw it had been placed on a piece of paper and a crumpled handkerchief. Gingerly, she tugged the paper free.

  It was a note, scrawled in Coldhardt’s hand:

  MISS ME, Cx

  Tye touched the paper to her lips, lost in harried thoughts. Kisses from Coldhardt? It seemed unlikely.

  ‘What the hell are we gonna do?’ Patch wailed, and Tye wished she had a good answer.

  Motti’s journey in the limo was mercifully brief, barely half an hour through the outskirts of Rome to some fancy villa on the fringes of the Janiculum. The quaint, picturesque streets were dark and silent, lending a kind of creepy fairy-tale feel to the journey.

  Con was still clutching his hand so tightly that the bloodied skin was blue beneath. She was shuddering and shaking. Seeing her like this hurt far more than anything she could unwittingly do to him. He’d never seen anything like it.

  As the big car turned smoothly into a courtyard and started to slow, he realised with a chill that, after tonight, he might never see anything ever again.

  ‘This is Samraj’s villa,’ said Yianna with a smug smile. ‘Now you believe me, perhaps, that you were sent to Florence under false pretences?’

  Motti didn’t even look up, cradling Con’s head, stroking her hair. ‘Just let us out of here.’

  The big bruisers bundled them outside and towards an intricately carved doorway. Motti kept a close hold on Con, scared she would collapse. She was staring round sightlessly, the real her hiding away in some secret, safer place. Sounded good – Motti wished he could retreat from reality too. Gargoyles peered down from the old stone walls, watching them approach with scuffed lichen eyes.

  They paused at the doorway while Yianna caught them up, leaning heavily on her stick, her left foot scraping over the gravel. As she pulled out a phony stone in the wall, Motti saw a black plastic pad behind – a ’print scanner by the look of it. Once she’d placed her index finger against it, a green light winked on and a hidden bolt retracted, allowing her to open the door.

  Motti half expected them to be taken to a cell. Instead, they were led into an opulent study done out in art deco style, all black and white, squared-off corners, geometric lines. At once, his attention was taken by the tall Indian woman, her willowy form flattered by close-fitting midnight blue, standing expectantly by a black marble fireplace. She looked about forty, the hard beauty of her face framed by thick, straight black hair. She wore a snake bracelet on her upper arm, the gold curling sensuously twice around the toned, dusky flesh. Its eyes were diamonds, and there was something of their cruel glitter in the woman’s own.

  He gave Con’s hand a reassuring squeeze, though probably more for his own comfort than hers, and did his best to seem unflappable. ‘So you’re Samraj, right?’

  ‘Very astute,’ she said mockingly.

  ‘Don’t be so hard on the boy. I imagine he’s had quite a night.’

  Motti whirled round at the sound of the familiar voice. It was Coldhardt. He was pouring himself a drink from a crystal decanter. The liquid was the same rich, dark crimson as the gash on his temple. His usually immaculate suit looked a little crumpled, his steel-grey cravat was spotted with blood, but his blue eyes were as sharp and clear as always.

  ‘What is this?’ Motti breathed as Coldhardt sipped from his tiny glass. ‘You seem pretty much at home, man.’

  ‘So he should,’ said Samraj. ‘He has been here many times.’

  Motti went on staring. He realised he was clutching Con to him like a security blanket. ‘You sold us out?’ He could feel the blood pounding in his temples. ‘Is that what this is about?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Motti.’ Coldhardt looked irritated, swigged back his drink. ‘I’m a prisoner here, just as you are.’

  ‘Only because you choose to be so difficult,’ Samraj purred. ‘If you’d accompanied me quietly, I wouldn’t have had to resort to such crude violence.’

  Coldhardt inclined his bloodied head in rueful agreement. ‘Just how did you gain access to my stronghold?’

  She raised her arm until the golden serpent was staring directly at him. ‘In one of the diamonds there’s a miniaturised retinal scanner. When you kissed my hand at the party, you gazed directly into it – a lingering look I recorded for posterity.’

  ‘And used to create an exact match of my retina to bypass the security lift,’ Coldhardt concluded. ‘Motti, I trust you’ll introduce safeguards to ensure such a breach never happens again?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll make it my number one job,’ said Motti bitterly, ‘when your girlfriend here sends us back home.’

  Samraj turned to him. ‘I had hoped that you and your friends would be at the castle too. I wished to take you all together with a minimum of fuss – so I was delighted when I learned of your plans to enter my premises.’

  Motti stared at Coldhardt. ‘You told her?’

  ‘Since none of you were there, it was obvious you were out on a job,’ he replied calmly. ‘And Ms Vasavi knows very well what we’ve been working on.’

  ‘Yeah, well. Since this is all so chummy, you think Con could sit down? She’s flipped out.’ He nodded angrily at Yianna, who now hovered behind them with two of her bodyguards. ‘Little Miss Beatch here wouldn’t let her ride up front.’

  Samraj smiled at Coldhardt. ‘I told you I had your workforce in my power.’

  ‘Only two of them.’ Coldhardt shrugged. ‘I told you they would not be taken easily.’

  ‘Two will do.’ She turned to her bodyguards. ‘At the first sign of trouble from Coldhardt – kill his children.’

  Coldhardt’s face didn’t betray a flicker of emotion. He casually poured himself a little more to drink.

  ‘So that’s why we’re here. Hostages.’ Motti helped Con over to an antique chaise longue, looked at Coldhardt beseechingly, all efforts at cool exhausted. ‘What’s going on? What is all this?’

  ‘Yes, do tell the poor dears, Nathaniel,’ said Samraj agreeably. ‘Tell them how both Demnos and I approached you, quite independently, to steal the other’s fragments of the Amrita prescription. Explain how you accepted both our offers – and both our advance fees – while keeping your talented little helpers in the dark. Worried they would think less of you, perhaps? Or that they might suspect you would double-cross them just as readily?’

  Con sat perched on the edge of the couch, staring into space. Motti was glad she wasn’t hearing this.

  ‘Don’t mistake me, Nathaniel,’ Samraj continued. ‘You know I have always admired your audacity and daring. Why else would I have employed you
so many times in the past to acquire my little treasures?’ He raised an eyebrow, and she smiled seductively, turning Motti’s stomach. ‘Aside from that reason, of course. I can see how such a bold enterprise must have seemed irresistible to you.’ The smile faded. ‘But while I did not presume to underestimate your greed and ambition … you underestimated me.’

  ‘I didn’t suspect that Yianna was working for you,’ Coldhardt admitted. He cast a measured look at the sullen, sickly girl. ‘Why? Why turn against your own father?’

  ‘He is a monster,’ Yianna said quietly. ‘He does not love me. All he sees in me is the ghost of my mother. That is what he wishes to preserve.’

  Samraj nodded, her face the picture of sympathetic concern. ‘He is a fool not to love you for who you are.’

  ‘I can understand it,’ said Motti darkly.

  ‘You know nothing.’ Yianna stared at him, her hooded eyes agleam. ‘No one can replace my mother in his memory. Together, they made me. I am their legacy, his dearest possession. He …’ She faltered, put a hand to her cheek. ‘He set a surgeon to my face when I was only ten, so I would look more like her … The clothes he dressed me in were copies of her old clothes.’ She stared into space, shaking her head, bewildered. ‘Nothing is mine. Nothing is about Yianna. And it should be. That is only fair, isn’t it?’ She snarled at Motti. ‘Well, isn’t it?’

  Motti said nothing, wondering if this was what Tye might have become if she hadn’t left her father so young: bitter, emotionally retarded, twisted as all hell.

  ‘Do not torment yourself, my dear,’ said Samraj softly. But Motti saw no sympathy in the woman’s glittering eyes. She merely found the outburst distasteful.

  Still Yianna’s glare was on Motti. ‘He chops up his snakes and makes promises and vows to find the secret of the Amrita, to heal me and make me strong. So he can go on controlling me for ever.’ He looked away. ‘But Samraj will have the secret before him. She will share it with me. She will share her life with me. And we shall leave my father with nothing.’

  Coldhardt gave her his wintry smile. ‘Samraj and Demnos are old lovers and older rivals. Do you truly believe she acts for your sake?’

  Yianna nodded firmly.

  ‘Of course I do. I have seen what the old fool has done to her over the years. I care for her as I would my own child. I’m like you, Nathaniel.’ Samraj smiled benignly at Motti and Con, who was still staring vacantly into space. ‘We both take injured, unloved little things and give them something to strive for, to believe in …We teach them our own values.’

  Motti felt his cheeks burning. He willed Coldhardt to say something, to shout her down, to let loose his icy temper and trash the place. But he only stood there, impassive. He didn’t contradict her.

  ‘Is that what you’ve done with the Cult of Ophiuchus – taught them your values?’ he said at length, changing the subject. ‘I understood they followed only their illustrious, long-living leader. And yet you seem to have them running about for you like errand boys.’

  ‘Only Hela is a true adept of the cult,’ Samraj corrected him. ‘The others are simply hired muscle. The best that money can buy, naturally.’

  ‘She’s got a load more of those tattooed creeps over at the Serpens labs,’ Motti told Coldhardt. ‘A ton of wires and tubes sticking out of them – she’s using them in some kind of experiment.’

  ‘Hela and I are united in our vision to restore the cult of Ophiuchus to former glories,’ said Samraj slyly. ‘So yes, she is assisting Yianna and me in one way, while her brethren aid me in another.’ She stalked slowly forward towards Coldhardt. ‘You never understood, did you, Nathaniel? You skulked around my house in the dead of night, and yes, you found my precious scraps of paper, the clues and riddles relating to Ophiuchus and his great secret. I knew what you were up to, and I was prepared to tolerate your curiosity – after all, it was you who stole several of those relics for me in the first place.’ She shook her head, mock-chiding him. ‘But when I told you I kept the most precious manuscripts of all in my labs, I didn’t mean more pieces of parchment.’

  Coldhardt considered, then smiled. ‘You spoke in metaphor. How pretty of you.’

  She nodded. ‘I was speaking of the real legacy that Ophiuchus left behind. A manuscript written in chemical bases – the genome of the cultists. Their every gene and chromosome, given up for me to map and study.’

  ‘Why?’ Motti demanded.

  ‘Over the passing centuries, these adepts of Ophiuchus have lived in small, isolated groups,’ Samraj told him, ‘maintaining a strict, rarefied diet, breeding selectively. As a result they are not mere mongrels like us, walking bags of contaminated chemicals. They are genetically pure. Their bodies yield up proofs of an impossibly long life – some of them, many hundreds of years.’

  ‘That’s not true immortality,’ said Coldhardt quietly.

  ‘Far from it,’ Samraj concurred. ‘Today’s world is polluted and poisoned – the food we eat, the soil we tread, the air we breathe. And the cultists’ unique genetic make-up makes them extremely vulnerable to this pollution.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’ Motti challenged her. ‘That the stuff you need to make the Amrita ain’t pure enough no more?’

  She gave him a withering look. ‘Amrita is not some magic potion. It cannot be squeezed from a snake’s head as that fool Demnos believes. It cannot be concocted from eye of newt and toe of frog, quaffed down to give everlasting life. Nothing in nature is so easy.’ She crossed to join Coldhardt, her voice slow and earnest, as if she sought his understanding and approval. ‘My experiments have shown me the truth. Amrita is a purifying substance secreted within the body, by the higher glands. It can only be produced when a perfect balance is achieved between mind and body – a union, if you will, between our basest desires and our highest principles. For each is given meaning by the other.’

  For a moment Motti was put in mind of Coldhardt’s statue, the man struggling endlessly with the demon. He saw a dark gleam steal into his mentor’s eyes. It scared him.

  ‘So that is the significance of the serpent and the healer imagery in the legend of Ophiuchus,’ Coldhardt said softly.

  ‘We have only to look to his constellation to see the endless quest for balance playing out,’ she said. ‘Some look at the pattern of stars and see Ophiuchus bearing a snake torn in two. Others see him presenting a two-headed king snake, a crown adorning each. But to the cultists, the patterns are a nightly reminder that the balance is reached only through meditation, self-denial, fasting and prayer.’

  Motti grimaced. ‘If that’s immortality, you can stick it.’

  ‘Ironic, isn’t it? The only way to live for all time is to have no kind of life at all.’ Samraj looked into Coldhardt’s eyes. ‘But soon, even that will not be an option for the cultists. As the human body grows choked by chemicals and poisoned by pollution, Amrita is produced in ever smaller amounts.’

  ‘Throw muck into the well and you clog up the water.’

  ‘That is why the cultists are dying out,’ she said. ‘And why Hela and her fellows have agreed to share their secrets with me alone, so that I might help them.’

  ‘I thought they’d taken sacred vows and stuff to keep their mouths shut,’ said Motti.

  ‘Yes, to protect the secrets of the cult. But with the cult itself doomed to certain extinction, such sacrifice seems slightly redundant. Therefore, a faction of acolytes have chosen to break their vows so that their precious religion will not perish.’

  ‘But you don’t care about that, do you?’ said Coldhardt. ‘All you want is the Amrita – for yourself.’

  ‘For the good of all humankind, Nathaniel, naturally.’ She paused, smiled wanly. ‘But my efforts have been in vain. All my attempts to synthesise Amrita … to enhance it and adapt it … They have failed.’

  He stared at her. ‘Then that’s it? The end of the road?’

  ‘So it seemed. But thanks to Yianna, I have found a new path. One that stretches into the shadowland
s of history, towards knowledge the civilised world has shied away from.’ Samraj’s smile grew crueller in triumph. ‘In his long, long life, Ophiuchus learned many secrets. And at last I stand on the brink of uncovering the greatest and darkest secret of them all.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jonah was fleeing for his life down a foggy street. He couldn’t see who was chasing him, but he knew instinctively they meant to kill him. The buildings all around him were towering, ancient and stooped, full of snakes that hissed and rattled, whispered his whereabouts. Dark shadows detached themselves from the smoke-blackened stone to join his hunters, and Jonah pushed himself harder, faster. He had to find Patch and Motti. They were in trouble and it was his fault, but now an alarm was blaring. An insistent warning. Get out of here, it was saying, before –

  His eyes snapped open, he pushed himself up on his elbows. A dream. That was all. He was in his hotel room in Pisa and the phone was ringing. He squinted at the clock. It was 6.30am. No one knew he was here, and he hadn’t asked for a wake-up call, so who the hell …

  The phone wasn’t stopping. Irritated, he grabbed for the receiver. ‘Hello?’

  Nothing but silence the other end.

  ‘Hello?’ he said again.

  There was a click as the phone went dead.

  He frowned. Replaced the handset. ‘Wrong number,’ he told himself, not believing it for a second.

  Now somebody knew exactly where he was.

  Cursing, Jonah scrambled out of bed, swiftly slipped on his jeans and denim jacket, trying to clear his head of the shadows in his dream. Coldhardt’s man had dropped him in a quaint, quiet little town called Pontedera as dawn was breaking. From there he had hitched a lift to nearby Pisa, hoping he’d stand out a little less obviously while he tried to decide what to do next.

  After a day and a night’s soul-searching he was no closer to an answer. And while he had found a quiet and modest hotel along the Via Roma, not far from the famous leaning tower, he had found no peace of mind.

  But had someone now found him?

  He bundled down the stairs, crossed the deserted reception. They had his passport behind the desk somewhere – he’d have to come back and collect it later. The door to the street was unbolted. He looked round, suspiciously, then slipped outside.