The Bloodline Cipher

by Stephen Cole

  ‘Mr Patrick Kendall …’ Tye smiled at him. ‘Sounds quite sophisticated, actually!’

  ‘D’you reckon?’ He closed his swollen eye and murmured the name over and over. ‘Really?’

  ‘I bet Patrick Kendall won’t be able to move for hot girlfriends.’

  Patch turned back to his viewfinder and put the lens back up to the crack between window and door. ‘Well, that’s all for the future, innit. Plenty of time, yeah? I mean, we ain’t in no hurry to leave Coldhardt … I don’t reckon we’ll leave for ages. We’re like a family.’

  Tye hoped her bland smile would reassure him as she scanned the street once more for any signs of trouble. In truth, she had no idea what she felt right now.

  Suddenly Motti’s voice sounded from Tye’s walkie-talkie. ‘Heidel’s telling Bree it’s time to split. ’Bout the only interesting thing he’s said since he got here. Brushstrokes this and cubism that …’

  ‘Target on the way,’ Con’s voice confirmed over Patch’s radio on the back seat. ‘Bree’s with him.’

  ‘On it,’ said Patch instantly, training the camcorder at the auction-house doors.

  Tye sank down in her seat a little way, picked up Patch’s magazine and pretended to read. A minute or so later she saw Heidel walk down the steps, Bree just a step behind him. Him in his dark Italian suit, her in a pale green summer dress and shades, they looked like any other well-off couple on their way home after a successful afternoon’s bidding. Have you ever got a surprise waiting back home, thought Tye, watching Patch zoom in on Heidel’s lined face. She wondered what emotions might show there when he realised Sadie was missing and Sorin out of the picture … that his plan had been shot all to hell and his hotel room stripped to its linen.

  ‘Got some sweet footage here, Tye. Lovely.’ Patch rested the camcorder on her shoulder, framing Heidel in the viewfinder while Bree hailed a black cab. He panned out as it pulled in beside him. Bree held open the door for Heidel, and the two of them climbed into the back.

  ‘They spent five hundred grand in there,’ drawled Motti over Patch’s walkie-talkie. ‘Think I should chuck a phosphor cap at the crap they bought? Can’t make ’em any uglier.’

  ‘Just get back here,’ Tye told him, watching as the black cab pulled away into the bus lane and began creeping past the evening traffic.

  Patch hit the pause button on the camcorder. ‘So long, see ya, woudn’t wanna be ya.’

  Con jogged up and tapped on the window of the passenger door, her cheeks flushed. ‘One microphone safely retrieved from the old fart’s chair,’ she bubbled, tossing the tiny bug at Patch. Tye closed up the MacBook, shifted it into the back and let her in. ‘Now, let’s get back to the airfield – stopping at McD’s along the way, yes?’

  ‘Mac attack!’ Patch cheered, pocketing the mic. ‘Although my quarter-cheese’ll probably bite back, the way my luck’s been running.’

  ‘You should eat Filet o’ Fish instead,’ Con advised, settling happily in the front seat.

  ‘Ready to roll, people?’ Motti called as he opened the back of the van and scrambled inside alongside the bulging suitcase. ‘I was checking the map while I waited out back, and I figure it’s best that you drive us out of town to South Ruislip, Tye. We’ll dump the van and pick up our train from there.’

  Patch switched off his camcorder. ‘Job done, money earned.’

  She pulled the portable sat-nav from her bag, programmed it in, and then threaded her way into the traffic. ‘Looks like we pulled it off again.’

  ‘Of course we did,’ said Con, sighing happily. ‘We always do!’

  Tye frowned, and for a superstitious moment wished she could touch something made of wood right then. Then she remembered the mahogany beads on the band holding her dreads back, and brushed against her bruised scalp as she reached for them. The pain made her wince so hard she stepped on the brake, and the van lurched violently.

  ‘Hey,’ grumped Motti. ‘I know you must be missing Jonah, but there’s no need to drive like him.’

  Tye forced a laugh, accelerated smoothly away. ‘Fair enough. Keep your eyes peeled for drive-throughs.’ She felt a wash of fatigue numb her body. Soon, she told herself, you’ll be taking the plane back to Geneva, back home to Jonah and that safe, clean bed you’re hanging out for. Really soon.

  But her fingers strayed to her cheek, and the bite-bruise that marked her dark skin like a brand, and she knew she would be seeing Sadie’s eyes up close any time she closed her own.

  There was nothing for Jonah to do but get back to cracking the Bloodline Cipher. He wanted to lose himself in the work, to jump from his bedroom down into that world in the screen and drive the blood and bodies far from his mind.

  But he supposed it was more than that, too. The Cipher was no longer simply a challenge to be overcome; he was determined to strip away the mystery Nomen Oblitum had built up around themselves. He didn’t like feeling he owed his life to a sect of black magic killers. It was as if that put him in their power somehow.

  And the power they’d demonstrated was one of the most frightening things he’d ever seen. Maybe you could explain it away through Dim Mak and martial arts mastery … but that in itself was a kind of force and skill so way beyond the everyday it might as well be magic.

  Jonah found himself praying the poison darts he and Maya had taken would test negative for curare, that he could prove the cipher was just a sophisticated hoax the NO men were trying to cash in on – something cooked up centuries back, maybe to con some European king into funding a would-be wizard … If he could prove that – and if only Tye and the others would bring back firm proof that Heidel was not who he claimed to be – Coldhardt would end his association with these people and that would be the end of that. Things would be back to how they were.

  Let the freaks find some other rich shady type to work on. He rubbed his tired eyes. Make it someone else’s problem.

  Maya came into the room with two cappuccinos and sat beside him at the computer. They watched the stream of numbers playing across the screen. She’d been very quiet since they’d got back. He couldn’t say he blamed her.

  ‘You’ve got a lot of processing power here,’ she observed suddenly.

  He seized on the chance of distraction. ‘I’ve tapped into an academic server farm,’ he told her. ‘I’m running the code on their massively parallel clusters of processors …’

  ‘What happens if there’s nothing to decode?’

  ‘That would be perfect – it would mean these NO guys are hoaxing this stuff about junk DNA and holding back the years …’

  ‘Out of interest, why do you find the idea of extending human lifespan hard to believe?’ she asked, sounding genuinely curious. ‘It is a legitimate area of modern scientific research.’

  ‘Exactly – modern scientific research, not old stuff from when most people thought the world was flat.’ Jonah paused and smiled. ‘Hang on, though. What about a witch turning someone into a frog? That’s got to be the result of some serious genetics research, right?’

  ‘Actually, I’d say it was more a kind of “alchemy of organic matter”,’ Maya replied.

  Jonah stared at her. ‘Please be joking.’

  ‘You didn’t see my broomstick parked outside?’ Maya suddenly showed her small, crooked teeth in a big grin. ‘I’m just saying the old, arcane arts made progress into the mysteries of life far faster than science did. I’ve seen so much evidence –’

  He shot her a look. ‘From translating those creepy old texts for your little occult group in Moscow?’

  Maya nodded. ‘I’ve studied a great deal.’

  ‘And you think Nomen Oblitum is for real?’

  ‘The cult exists,’ she said flatly. ‘And the Scribe had done his homework. I’ve come across all that stuff about the significance of Isis to Nomen Oblitum. But as for whether that Scribe was on the level about the cipher …’ She looked away. ‘In any case, when I said there may be nothing to decode in the Guan Yin manuscript, I was
n’t implying it’s a hoax. But what if the scripts are simply a written-down version of some polyglot tongue – a hotchpotch of languages that people of the time would have understood in that written form – bits of old German, bits of Flemish, you know …’

  Jonah smiled. ‘I’m running a word and character match too through Yale’s antique languages database too for pattern similarity. You never know, it might just bring something to light.’

  Maya smiled back. ‘Think you’re clever, don’t you?’

  ‘Yep.’ He put a hand on her arm, squeezed it. ‘Look, I’m sorry for what you had to go through today.’

  ‘Not exactly your fault.’

  ‘Motti will suss out how everyone got past the defences, and Coldhardt will check out the drug on those darts and a doctor’s going to check us out.’ Jonah’s fingers strayed to the tender lump on his neck. ‘Don’t worry about Coldhardt. He’s flared up at me too, I know how scary it can be.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, but the way her body stiffened suggested otherwise. ‘He’s your boss, not mine. I mean, I can leave any time I want to … right?’

  ‘Do you want to leave?’

  Maya stared broodingly at the computer screen. ‘I don’t like unsolved mysteries,’ she said at last.

  Jonah smiled. ‘Me neither. So how about you tell me more about these exotic symbols you say you can spot in the cipher.’

  ‘OK.’ Her face softened as she reached out for the mouse and called up a file. ‘Here’s a composite scan I did. All the symbols I think I see, together: rou, ji, jin, gu, xue, mai, qi … ’

  ‘Flesh and temple/sacrifice I know, but the others …?’

  ‘Sinew, bone, blood, vein, breath.’

  ‘Sure we’re not translating a biology textbook?’

  ‘Ha, ha.’ Maya shook her head. ‘What you might not know is that those are also the terms Chinese scholars used to describe the art and character of someone’s handwriting.’

  Jonah frowned. ‘That can’t just be coincidence.’

  ‘I know. The symbols, once they’ve been decrypted, are sort of referring to themselves.’

  ‘Self-reflexive …’ Jonah frowned. ‘Hmm. Sounds like the coder may be having a little joke. A joke at our expense.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It might be a way of telling us that there’s no actual code to crack – that the whole manuscript is nothing more than a lot of nice handwriting.’ Jonah felt a surge of relief. ‘A plaintext language, like you speculated – but a made-up one. Gibberish that means nothing at all.’ He sank back in his chair and grinned. ‘Which is proof that those weirdos in the robes were making up all that stuff and Coldhardt can tell them to go to hell.’

  ‘I told you,’ said Maya. ‘The cipher exists.’

  ‘How d’you know for sure?’ Jonah sighed. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Maya, I know you’ve spent a long time working on the translation of this thing –’

  ‘It’s not a hoax, Jonah. End of story.’ She turned back to the screen. ‘So. Here’s the trickiest of the decrypted pictograms, placed right at the end of the first section …’ She scanned the list of filenames and double-clicked to bring it up. ‘There, see? It’s known as Xin.’

  ‘And why is Xin the trickiest?’

  ‘It’s a pictograph of the physical heart, but in ancient Chinese writings it’s used to refer to the mind as well as the emotions. Sort of a heart/mind. That can make translations difficult.’

  ‘Hearts and minds being one and the same …’ Jonah sighed. ‘That would make a lot of things easier.’

  She looked at him, her grey eyes penetrating. ‘Like when your head knows you’re in a life that’s bad for you, but your heart tells you to stay put?’

  He couldn’t hold her gaze and looked away, bristling. ‘Or when your head accepts that some fourteenth-century cipherpunk might have taken you in, but your heart can’t bring itself to admit you’ve wasted your …’ He frowned, focusing on the characters. ‘Hang on …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That part of the text you showed me where the symbols had been overwritten – where is it?’

  Maya called up the relevant file.

  ‘There.’ Jonah pointed. ‘Look at the way that downward stroke has been gone over in darker ink …’

  ‘You can see, the ink underneath is really faded.’

  ‘Yeah, it looks faded now we’re coming to it seven hundred years later,’ Jonah agreed. ‘It probably didn’t look so faded back then. And if the retoucher was only correcting certain words, why use an ink that’s so much darker than the original? It looks like soot or something has been added to the tempera mix …’

  ‘Mmm.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Tell me again why Motti calls you a geek?’

  ‘I just noticed that the downstroke touched up on this symbol here …’ He started rearranging the various files side by side on the screen. ‘Looks a bit like this part of your inverted, rotated pictograph for “sinew”.’

  Maya peered in to check, scrunching up her eyes the way she did. ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Probably just coincidence.’ Jonah sighed. ‘It’s easy to see patterns where there aren’t any …’

  She smiled. ‘Head doesn’t want to believe, but the heart’s got other ideas, right?’

  ‘Maybe those self-referencing Chinese characters aren’t a joke,’ said Jonah. ‘Maybe they’re telling us not to look for the meaning in the words … but in the actual handwriting.’

  ‘Whoa,’ Maya breathed. ‘You mean the lines and strokes of the characters where they’ve been retouched?’

  ‘Might be worth checking those sections of the text,’ he agreed. ‘Don’t you think?’

  She didn’t answer, already busy calling them up on to the screen, fingers tapping impatiently on the mouse as she waited for each image to load.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The plane stood ready to go on the crumbling airstrip, and as dusk darkened the rural sweep about them, Tye stared at it longingly. She was standing in the doorway of a barn built alongside, keeping watch. Motti had given the usual forged papers and paid off the owner for use of the airstrip. But this time he’d thrown in a bit extra to be allowed to use the site’s X-ray security systems. All kinds of stuff must pass through this secret strip.

  ‘Last time we came here, we’d just sprung Jonah and were taking him back to Geneva,’ she remembered.

  ‘Yeah, that day’s tattooed on my heart,’ said Motti gruffly from inside the barn.

  ‘It’s tattooed on my fart!’ Patch blew a raspberry by way of demonstration, and Tye rolled her eyes.

  ‘C’mon, Cyclops, would you get going?’

  ‘You wanna fly tonight or fry tonight?’ Tye glanced back at Patch as he placed Heidel’s well-worn leather briefcase on a small conveyor belt in front of the X-ray camera. ‘If there is a booby trap inside this thing, let’s hope it ain’t triggered by X-rays.’

  Con wriggled off her hay bale and hid behind it instead. ‘Not funny.’

  ‘Not meant to be.’ The scanner hummed into noisy life. ‘But there can’t be anything too dodgy inside this case. I mean, why would Heidel risk taking it past Heathrow security?’

  ‘Yeah. Like, nothing gets past those airport guys,’ Motti deadpanned. ‘Anyways, could be he didn’t risk nothing. Could be a back-up booby trap he made over here and left in the room in case we got past the bitch with the bow.’

  ‘We can’t underestimate these people,’ Con agreed.

  As if on cue, Tye felt a whole storm of pain as something cold and solid chopped into the side of her neck. Looking the wrong damned way, she realised. With an exaggerated scream of pain to warn the others, she collapsed to the ground with her eyes shut; pretending she was out cold until she knew what they were up against.

  ‘None of you move!’ she heard a man bellow in a fierce Scottish accent. From the sound of things, no one was arguing. And now she saw a second man emerge from behind the barn, striding up to join his friend in the doorway. He was wear
ing a balaclava and holding a sawn-off shotgun, and Tye guessed the first man was packing the same – he’d probably hit her with the stock.

  Two of you, Tye thought, trying to ignore the numbness in her neck. Any more?

  ‘Who are you?’ she heard Motti drawl. ‘The cops?’

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ the second one said, a Londoner by the sound of it. ‘Dunno who you are or what your game is, but the boss don’t like being snooped on.’

  ‘You are working for Heidel?’ Con enquired.

  ‘Who the hell is Heidel?’ said the Scottish man. ‘Just hand over the camcorder.’

  Someone saw us filming outside the auction house, Tye realised, must’ve followed us here. But the Scot’s tone of voice and speed with which he answered suggested he really didn’t know who Heidel was. Perhaps they only called their boss by a codename?

  ‘Camcorder, now!’ The Londoner was skittering about in the doorway like the ground was burning his shoes, cranked up on adrenaline. ‘Or I’ll waste the lot of you.’

  ‘All right, take it easy!’ Patch’s voice sounded high and strained. ‘You can have it.’

  ‘Throw it here.’ Tye heard a faint slap and shuffle as the Londoner caught the camcorder and jammed it into his jacket pocket. ‘What’s this other stuff you got here? What’re you doing with it?’

  Tye swore in Creole under her breath. If these gorillas made off with the rest of their evidence, their mission here would have been a complete washout. She braced herself to move.

  ‘It is only our luggage,’ said Con languidly. ‘We’re going on holiday.’

  ‘Don’t get clever,’ the Scot warned her.