The Bloodline Cipher

by Stephen Cole

  ‘That could have been staged,’ Con argued.

  Maya looked at her. ‘No,’ she said simply.

  ‘Yeah, well you would say that, Red.’ Motti looked at her doubtfully. ‘They heard us crash into the limo, knew we were coming and made you scream to bring us running.’

  Jonah was looking at Tye with please be on my side eyes. ‘I’d know if Maya was lying,’ Tye conceded. ‘I don’t think she is.’

  ‘And we don’t have time to wait about here in any case,’ said Jonah firmly. ‘We’re pushing our luck as it is.’

  ‘That’s for sure,’ said Motti. ‘Start ’er up, Tye. We’ll get a message through to Coldhardt and he can decide.’

  ‘It’s gonna be a squeeze, four of us in the back,’ Patch reflected. ‘Tell you what, Maya, you can sit next to me.’

  Jonah got in first. ‘Don’t mind Patch,’ he told Maya, ‘we’re getting him neutered.’

  ‘With the world’s tiniest nail scissors,’ Motti added, wincing as he budged along to allow Jonah and Maya inside.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Maya quietly, shutting the door.

  As she started the engine, Tye watched the girl in the rear-view, angling for the tiniest sign of triumph in the girl’s sullen face, or eyes, or gestures. But Maya’s hunched shoulders suggested anxiety, and the way she was shaking her legs and wetting her lips so frequently were classic signs of stress.

  Tye put the car in gear and pulled away from the dark stony stretch of the now-abandoned fort, the car wreck and the corpses; leaving the blackness for where the first stirrings of dawn promised light on the horizon.

  Chapter Seven

  Tye had sat through God-knew-how-many debriefs with Coldhardt, but had never known an atmosphere in the hub quite like this one. Motti was quieter than usual, a new pair of glasses perched on his nose and dosed up on special painkillers prescribed by Coldhardt’s private doctor. Patch too seemed very restrained; from the way his hand kept touching his stomach, she imagined the pain was reminding him of how close he’d come to dying last night. How close they all had come.

  On the long haul back to Geneva, Tye had thought of little else. Even when Jonah took over at the plane controls, the events of their disastrous mission kept looping through her thoughts, staving off sleep.

  Jonah and Con weren’t here for the debrief either, which was also weird. They were staying with Maya in a safe house in Chamonix across the French border; the girl was being kept well away from the heart of Coldhardt’s operation until her story checked out. And as for Coldhardt himself, well …

  That was really the strangest part of it.

  It had fallen to Tye to call him last night from San Angelo – ‘you’ll be able to read just how bad he’s taking it,’ the others had insisted – and so she’d given Coldhardt the bare details of their encounter with Heidel and his party posse; explained Heidel had known the Talent were coming and even known their names … And while she hadn’t mentioned how his ring had wound up on Sadie’s finger – they were still licking their wounds, which tasted bad enough already – she figured he needed to know about the manuscript ending up in the flames.

  The weird thing was that he’d taken the news with an air of cold resignation; he was clearly angry, but it was as if he’d somehow expected something like this would happen, and now it had, he had to deal with it.

  ‘He wanted us to give you a message.’

  ‘Did he, now.’

  ‘He said, “Time waits for no men, and I am the proof, the living proof of something he will never own.”’

  The silence on the line, relieved only by digital noise, had gone on for so long she hadn’t dared disturb it. And she knew better than to press him when he changed the subject, his voice dipping into its iciest reaches:

  ‘Did you manage to salvage anything from the evening’s performance?’

  Tye had found herself speaking enthusiastically about Maya and her digital archive, praying that Jonah hadn’t been hoodwinked and that Coldhardt still had a shot at getting whatever the hell he wanted out of this grimoire thing.

  Now, as she and Patch and Motti worked to pile flesh on the bones of their story, Coldhardt was listening with an air of grave distraction, as if this was merely a ritual to be got through before his real work could begin. Tye sensed there was a hell of a lot going on beneath the old man’s façade of attention, and it was a disquieting feeling.

  ‘I’m sorry we loused up,’ said Motti. ‘Guess we didn’t allow for another crew coming on that strong.’

  ‘I didn’t give you much time to prepare contingencies,’ Coldhardt conceded.

  Patch shrugged. ‘But how come they knew we’d be breaking in last night?’

  ‘There are two obvious possibilities,’ said Coldhardt. ‘The first is that they have somehow been listening in on our conversations …’

  Motti scowled. ‘While we were out on that dumb picnic?’

  Tye shook her head firmly. ‘Me and Con, we checked. No one around.’

  ‘Or else,’ Coldhardt went on heavily, ‘there is a spy in your ranks. Someone Heidel has recruited and who is passing on all they know.’

  Tye felt her veins freezing over. ‘That’s impossible,’ she whispered.

  A faint smile warmed Coldhardt’s weathered face a fraction. ‘I find the spy hypothesis unlikely, but we must all remain vigilant. Every possibility must be accounted for, particularly when we are up against such formidable opponents.’

  Tye nodded curtly. ‘So who are they?’

  ‘The woman with the crossbow is Sadie Djief, a French girl raised in Chad, and now turned mercenary. She has a reputation for efficiency and sharp-shooting, but she is somewhat unstable.’

  ‘Psycho cow,’ said Patch with feeling. ‘Still, at least you can’t accuse her of talking too much. You know, I never heard her say a word.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have. Her tongue was ripped out six years ago by an Indonesian interrogator in East Timor.’ Coldhardt spoke so casually he might have been discussing a game of cricket. ‘The one called Sorin I’ve been unable to identify, thus far … But the other female is Bree Matthews. She is a formidable planner and analyst, available only to the highest bidder.’

  ‘She’s also a grade-A bitch,’ muttered Tye. ‘But what about this Heidel guy? He said … you betrayed him.’

  Coldhardt’s face might have been carved in granite for all the emotion it showed. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

  ‘And he knew about the set-up, the way we’re all –’ She shrugged. ‘Well. Kind of …’Like family, she wanted to say, but it sounded so lame. And she thought of what else Heidel had said: They prove their love by risking everything, time after time … then in walks death.

  ‘He must have it in for you, big time,’ said Patch, stepping into her silence. ‘Who is this bloke?’

  ‘Not someone I expected to hear from again.’ The faintest ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of Coldhardt’s lips. ‘And certainly not someone who would burn a seven-hundred-year-old grimoire lightly.’

  Patch shrugged. ‘Well, what’re you gonna do to sort him out?’

  ‘Oh, I imagine Heidel would just love me to busy myself formulating plans and stratagems against him. I think I shall leave it to him or his associates to make the next move.’

  Against us, thought Tye with an uneasy shiver.

  ‘And what about our next move?’ said Motti. ‘What about the eversion of the manuscript that Maya got for us, does it check out?’

  ‘The DVD contains scans of an exotic text transcribed on to vellum, exactly what I would expect the Guan Yin manuscript to look like. But time – and Jonah’s talent for decryption – will tell.’ He paused. ‘Maya has also provided us with a full catalogue of Blackland’s RDIF tags and the frequencies upon which they each transmit – so if the grimoire does still exist, we may yet track it down.’

  ‘What about the books she brought with her?’ Tye asked.

  ‘A good selection.’ Coldhardt inclined his h
ead. ‘Fabulously rare and extraordinarily valuable. To acquire such a collection of arcane antiquity in one haul …’

  Motti shrugged. ‘Guess we did something right, then, huh?’

  ‘And what about Maya?’ asked Tye, still disquieted by the weird atmosphere in the room. ‘Is she for real?’

  ‘I’ve unearthed some information.’ Coldhardt pressed a button and a picture of Maya appeared on the screens. Dressed in an unflattering kaftan with big collars, eyes made up like a thick blue snail had crawled over the lids, she looked like something out of the 1960s. ‘Maya Marisova hails from a village outside Lviv, in Ukraine. She is nineteen years old. Building on her childhood aptitude for languages, both natural and computational, she spent last year studying history and ancient languages at Moscow State University. This picture was taken from her student files – her academic record is quite outstanding.’

  ‘What about her criminal record?’ wondered Motti. ‘She said she was in cop-trouble back home, had no visa.’

  Coldhardt nodded. ‘Earlier this year, one of her tutors disappeared in suspicious circumstances.’

  Tye raised her eyebrows. ‘How did Professor Blackland get on to her?’

  ‘Perhaps we should let the girl speak for herself.’ Coldhardt consulted a fob watch pulled from the pocket of his waistcoat. ‘I requested that Con and Jonah conduct a little conversation with the girl that could be shared with us.’ He hit another button on his remote and the picture changed to show a blank screen. A few seconds later it flared into life to display an empty leather armchair in a spotlit minimalist room. ‘Excellent. The camera’s activated. The interview can begin as scheduled.’

  Tye and Motti watched as Maya crossed into the picture, her red hair like a torch carried between white wall and wooden floorboards. She was wearing a baggy black cardigan and a short black skirt with stripy tights, a very different look from her student picture. If you don’t want to be found, become a new person, Tye supposed.

  Maya sat in the chair, apparently relaxed, holding a steaming mug of something.

  ‘Hidden camera?’ asked Motti.

  ‘Naturally.’ Coldhardt turned to Tye. ‘Study her closely. I must know if she is telling the truth and is a free agent … or if she is working for someone.’

  Patch sighed. ‘That Heidel bloke?’

  Coldhardt didn’t answer, staring at the screens as if he could see through them, at something lying in wait.

  ‘If he’s one of your competitors, how come you didn’t expect to run into him again?’ Tye persisted.

  ‘Because I thought I killed him, thirty-two years ago.’

  Tye jerked as if her head had slammed the brakes on. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I believe you heard.’ Coldhardt gave her a casual glance that sent chills through her, bone-deep. ‘Please, watch the screens, all of you.’

  In a grim silence shared by Patch and Motti, Tye did as she was told.

  Jonah sprawled on the sofa beside Con, while Maya sat in a squashy armchair cradling her mug of black tea. She was looking out of the window, a little smile on her elfin face as she took in the carte postale view of snowy Alpine crags and huge, conifer-smothered hills, of quiet, spotless streets and hotels with their balconies in bloom, window shutters flung wide.

  ‘Very different from Texas,’ she remarked, her English oddly inflected but so much warmer than Con’s accent. ‘Your Coldhardt must be very rich.’

  ‘And then some,’ Jonah agreed. ‘But then old man Blackland didn’t seem short of a few quid.’

  ‘He wasn’t. Much of his income came from the private sale of artefacts recovered during his archaeological digs …’

  ‘That’s what Coldhardt said,’ Jonah agreed. ‘A bit dodgy.’

  ‘I’d do the same,’ Con argued. ‘Shows initiative …’

  Jonah looked down at his sweaty hands, felt his stomach gently fizzing. The interrogation had begun.

  Coldhardt’s camera had been placed behind a two-way mirror, and he pictured Tye and the others scrutinising the pictures and performances back at the hub. He and Con had agreed that they would begin with some quite innocuous questions so that Tye could see how Maya responded when not under stress. Then, when they moved on to more probing questions, any attempts to lie should seem more obvious.

  ‘Did Blackland say where he found the Guan Yin manuscript?’ Jonah asked awkwardly. While he appreciated Maya needed vetting before she could be allowed into their circle, this seemed a pretty mean way of going about it. ‘I heard the museum in Turkey that was displaying it burnt down.’

  ‘It remained in the country,’ said Maya. ‘Blackland was out on a dig somewhere near Maçka, I think, a year or so ago, when he stumbled upon a derelict monastery built into the base of a cliff. So beautiful …’

  ‘You’ve been there?’

  ‘I wish.’ She looked at him and smiled selfconsciously, showing small crooked teeth. ‘Anyway, he discovered a concealed vault and inside it were several obscure books, one of which was this grimoire.’

  Con nodded. ‘And Blackland kept it for himself.’

  ‘Yes.’ Maya sipped her tea. ‘You know, it is thought the manuscript was brought back originally from Sudak, in my country. There have been many secret devotional cults dedicated to Guan Yin throughout the ages. It was said she was able to turn hell into paradise, that she reached out to unhappy, ignorant people with a thousand arms.’ She paused, and nodded. ‘Yes, it seems much powerful magic was practised in her name by these devotional cults. And one such society spawned the Guan Yin manuscript as a reference work for its members.’

  ‘How old is it?’ asked Jonah.

  ‘Blackland’s friend Morell dated the pages to the fourteenth century, but the knowledge they contain could be much older.’ She was warming to her theme. ‘Great libraries had been founded in Ukraine as early as the eleventh century. At Saint Sophia Cathedral men transcribed existing titles, swelling the stock of many other libraries in the provinces.’

  Con narrowed her eyes. ‘So it is possible that more than one copy exists of the original Guan Yin manuscript?’

  ‘Definitely. It’s thought that at least three are in existence.’

  ‘And each important member of this devotional cult would have had the key with which the cipher could be decoded,’ Jonah concluded.

  ‘You are a bright one, Jonah Wish.’ Maya smiled again. ‘Any such cult – and the manuscripts themselves – would have been in existence for around a hundred years when the Turks invaded in 1475. Public buildings were ransacked and burned to the ground – it seems most likely the invaders took the grimoires back to their homeland together with countless other treasures.’ She shrugged. ‘That is what Blackland believed, at any rate.’

  ‘Did you know Morell planned to steal the Guan Yin manuscript from Blackland?’ asked Con.

  ‘No,’ Maya replied, ‘I did not know. Was it Morell who hired you?’

  ‘Morell died before he could hire anyone,’ said Con.

  ‘I’m sorry. He seemed a nice man,’ Maya reflected. ‘But very envious of Blackland’s success.’

  ‘How did you find yourself working for Blackland, Maya?’ asked Jonah.

  ‘I was studying in Moscow, needed some work for the summer,’ Maya explained. ‘Blackland and I had certain friends in common there. It was through them he asked me to catalogue his kunstkammer.’

  Jonah raised his eyebrows. ‘Sounds rude.’

  Con turned and gave him a look. ‘It’s a German word, means art chamber.’

  ‘A collection of curiosities and wonder. That’s how Blackland spoke of it. He was so enthusiastic …’ Maya sighed. ‘Enthusiastic for me too, I found out. But I did not feel the same.’ She shrugged, suddenly quite matter of fact. ‘After he realised that, he started to threaten me.’ A haunted look crossed her eyes, and her fingers traced absently against the cut on her cheek. ‘Threatened me often.’

  ‘Threatened how?’ asked Jonah.

  ‘He said he would hurt
me, or maybe send me back home.’ She sighed, looked down at the floor. ‘The police wish to speak to me. A tutor I was close to disappeared, and they learned that he was a member of a secret occult group. A group for whom I had done work sometimes, translating old books on demonology and witchcraft, breaking encrypted spells and blessings …’

  Con nodded. ‘So you’re interested in black magic and stuff?’

  A gleam stole into Maya’s eyes as she smiled. ‘I love all the ritual of it. All the rules and the ceremony. The drama …’

  ‘The danger?’ Jonah ventured.

  ‘You believe those lurid tabloid stories, the scary Hollywood films.’ Maya looked disappointed. ‘The words and the rulings of the occult arts are not dangerous in themselves. As with the rulings of any belief system, it is the men who interpret them who are dangerous.’ She leaned forward in the chair. ‘Compare the atrocities done in the name of organised religions through the ages with those committed in the name of dark magic. Which cause has inflicted more suffering on a global scale?’

  Con got them back on-topic. ‘I take it Blackland was a member of this society too?’ Maya nodded. ‘But surely, if he smuggled you into America, by sending you back he’d be incriminating himself?’

  ‘It would not be the police who would deal with me.’ Maya looked away. ‘And since I have no living relatives, I have few places I can turn for protection.’

  Suppose we can all relate to that, thought Jonah.

  ‘Is my questioning completed?’ Maya asked. ‘There are many things I would like to ask you …’

  ‘Perhaps later,’ said Con, rising from the sofa with a furtive glance to the hidden camera. ‘Or perhaps not. We shall see, yes?’

  Maya looked at Jonah and smiled again. ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Well, Tye?’ Coldhardt enquired, as Maya’s image flicked off from the several screens.

  I don’t like the way she looks at Jonah, was Tye’s most forthright reaction. When someone was lying and feeling uncomfortable they would often turn their head or body away from their questioner, their hands and arms giving them away with stiff, self-directed gestures. But Maya was mirroring Jonah’s own posture – a sign that she was interested in him. Keep it clinical, Tye warned herself, trying to quell her unease. You’ve got nothing to worry about with Jonah, but if Coldhardt’s got doubts about any of us, and I turn in a sloppy job …