The Bloodline Cipher

by Stephen Cole

  ‘I won’t get clever. But you are getting tired, I think, yes?’

  ‘Shut up.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper, but Tye still caught it: ‘Street only told us to get the camcorder, Fin. It’s sorted. Come on.’

  ‘Yeah, but what’s this other stuff?’ the man called Fin persisted.

  ‘Look at me, both of you,’ Con tried again. ‘You need to look at me, listen to me –’

  ‘I warned you, bitch!’ Fin shouted, his voice wilder, breath quickening, psyching himself up to fire. ‘I’m gonna split you in two!’

  His finger twitched on the trigger of the sawn-off.

  Tye lashed out with her foot and knocked Fin’s legs from under him. The man fell backwards – firing the sawn-off as he went down. The Scottish man screamed as the top of his shoulder was scattered over the barn wall, the impact knocking him backwards. He dropped his own gun, crashed into a hay bale.

  Stomach churning, Tye threw herself towards Fin, but he recovered quicker than she expected and rolled clear, knelt up. She hit the ground, looked up and found herself staring into the barrel of the shotgun.

  Single selective trigger, she realised, recognising the model in a long, frozen moment of shock. No need to reload, he’s going to –

  Then Motti’s boot smacked into the barrel and knocked it clear even as the cartridge discharged. Tye flinched from the thunder of the blast, felt the heat on her face from the fierce spit of shot, smelt the overpowering reek of cordite. Forcing her eyes back open, she lunged towards Fin and punched him in the face. But the blow was stiff and weak, he rolled with the impact and she lost her balance, falling forward. She heard Fin scrambling up, but Motti jumped over her and kicked him in the balls. Fin’s whoop of pain was silenced by a punch to the jaw that left him reeling. He shambled away without another word. Motti made to follow, but then –

  ‘The other one!’ Con shouted.

  Tye turned in horror to find the Scottish bloke gripping his sawn-off in one bloody hand. His eyes were wild and staring behind the black mask, his breath coming in ragged snatches.

  ‘Back off!’ he screamed, aiming straight at Tye’s head.

  Motti put up his hands and did as he was told. Still on all fours, praying fervently to any gods that might listen, Tye crawled slowly backwards. Too frightened to speak, she knew she had to keep eye contact, had to keep some kind of connection between them. If she lowered her head it might be all the excuse he needed to blow it off. Don’t do this, she thought, as a tear teased down her cheek. Please don’t. Don’t.

  ‘Know why they call them “wristbreakers”, pal?’ she heard Motti say softly. ‘Use a sawn-off one-handed, recoil’s gonna jar it right out of your fingers. You might kill our girl … but then how’re you gonna stop the rest of us from killing you?’

  ‘Your friend has run away.’ Con’s voice was as hard as her stare. ‘Run after him, and you might even make it to a hospital before you pass out from blood loss … yes?’

  Grunting and moaning with pain, the man turned abruptly and fled into the darkening night.

  Tye let out a long, long shaky breath and lowered her head to the ground, fighting the nausea rising inside her. A moment later, she felt Motti’s arms around her, hauling her up, holding her close. She held him back for a few seconds, staring numbly at the bloodstained straw on the floor.

  ‘I’m OK,’ she mumbled, straightening up. ‘Everybody else?’

  ‘Alive, at least,’ said Con, hugging herself tightly. ‘Thank you, Tye. I’m sorry – I nearly got us killed.’

  ‘You tried,’ Motti told her. ‘He was too wired, too strung out for you to –’

  ‘I appreciate the kindness, Motti.’ Con closed her eyes. ‘But don’t.’

  Then Tye saw Patch’s pale face peeping out from behind the X-ray machine. ‘Thought they’d never go,’ he joked weakly. ‘Whoever they were.’

  ‘I heard them say they were working for someone called Street,’ said Tye, wiping sweat from her face with her sleeve. ‘Someone who must have seen us filming Heidel and come after us.’

  ‘Weren’t you checking for tails?’ Motti asked.

  ‘Weren’t you?’ she retorted, her voice rising without her meaning it to. She bit her lip, willed herself to keep calm. ‘I didn’t see anyone following us. Sorry.’

  ‘Oh, and you were great too, Cyclops.’ Motti glared at Patch. ‘You gave those psychos the camcorder just like that.’

  ‘Fair play, I gave ’em the camcorder,’ Patch agreed, holding up a small back rectangle. ‘But I never gave ’em the tape, did I?’

  Motti was shut up for once, and Tye forced a little smile. ‘Good work, Patch.’

  ‘Not only that, but while you kept them tosspots busy, I was getting Heidel’s case open.’ He stooped behind the X-ray machine. ‘Just as everything kicked off, I saw on the scanner there’s an incendiary device inside hooked up to the combination locks. Put in the wrong numbers and – phtt! – everything goes up in smoke.’ He held up a small firework-sized device attached to a length of wire. ‘Couldn’t keep me out, of course. I was about to lob it over there and start a distraction when you persuaded him to scoot.’ He frowned. ‘They have gone, haven’t they?’

  ‘They might be fetching back-up,’ said Motti moodily. ‘This Street character could be on his way –’

  ‘Or her way,’ said Con.

  He nodded. ‘The ’strip owner might even be in on it.’

  ‘We should clear out,’ Tye decided.

  ‘We’re all loaded up,’ Motti said, turning back to Patch. ‘Except for that case.’

  ‘You opened it, Patch,’ said Con, acting composed again, smoothing her fingers through her hair. ‘What’s inside it?’

  Patch blew out a long breath. He looked like he didn’t know quite where to start. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘Just you wait …’

  They cleared out of the barn, quietly and efficiently, leaving the bloodstains and the sawn-off behind them. Soon Tye was taking the plane up into the moonless sky, relief thumping in her chest like a second heartbeat.

  She flew low over fields and cities, hugging the landscape to avoid radar detection. Then the plane struck out across the Channel. The churning darkness of the ocean below was mirrored in the black, scudding clouds above. As if the night could know no peace.

  Tye felt just the same. She put the controls on to autopilot and sank back in her seat. She was tired, an aching tiredness that seemed to groan through her whole body. Over the rushing whoosh of the turbines, she heard nervous laughter and chatter from the cabin, as if from a million miles away. She looked at the seat beside her, where Jonah usually sat.

  ‘Nearly never saw you again,’ she murmured, pretending he was here. ‘Twice in one day.’

  Suddenly Patch came up behind her, made her jump. ‘Sorry, mate … just wanted to show you a little picture we found in Heidel’s briefcase.’ He perched a battered photograph on top of the altimeter. ‘Thought it might brighten up the flight deck.’

  He ducked back to join the others and Tye stared at the creased, faded picture, at two men with slicked back hair and sideburns. They were sitting on a spotless white terrace, in sunlight and sharp grey suits, drinking champagne. One of the men was young, in his twenties, maybe, dark and lean, smiling like a shark. The other was older, grey-haired. His eyes held shadows and his smile was strained, as if he felt he’d been left posing for the picture too long.

  Tye could almost sense the resentment still lingering as he stared out at her across the years. And she felt the thump of her heart in her throat.

  The smiling shark was a youthful Coldhardt, and he was pallying up to Heidel. But now Coldhardt was old himself, while the man she’d seen getting into a black cab that afternoon had barely aged a day since the picture was taken.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jonah sprawled on his bed, rubbing his gritty eyes. The clock said it was gone four in the morning. Grimacing, he turned its face to the wall. He’d been up all night with Maya, looking for
patterns in the overwrites. But now he was starting to flag, while she was looking as fresh as when they’d started, studying the screen up close while he rested his eyes.

  ‘The next retouched characters,’ she announced, ‘are another circle … followed by a downstroke.’

  ‘Flip and rotate by …’ He frowned. ‘What are we up to now?’

  ‘Should be seventy degrees.’ She turned to her pad of paper, arranging the various retouched strokes into different combinations, concocting new pictograms. They were following the same process of ‘rotate and reverse’ she’d used on the standalone symbols, in the same order. But the results weren’t encouraging. The symbols Maya arrived at were typically an exotic mess, only bearing the faintest resemblance to real Chinese pictograms.

  Jonah scratched the lump on his neck. It was itching like hell. Coldhardt’s doctor – a wiry, mysterious man named Draith who would turn up, patch up then disappear again – had given him and Maya a full physical this evening and pronounced them fit and well. The wounds would soon go down, he said – the itching was down to the way skin tightened as it healed.

  All the more remarkable considering those darts had contained a blend of curare just as the Scribe said. Draith’s report explained in overly clinical terms how the darts contained enough poison to kill an adult inside of thirty minutes.

  Jonah had crumpled the report into the tightest ever ball and chucked it in the bin. It lay buried now, out of sight if not out of mind, beneath hundreds of pieces of scribbled-on paper. He watched as another scrunched-up sheet sailed over from the desk to add to the pile.

  ‘There are too many circles,’ Maya noted sullenly. ‘Chinese writing uses angular strokes. I don’t see how the circles fit.’

  ‘Maybe we should skip them,’ said Jonah. ‘I mean, a circle’s a circle however much you flip it or turn it around.’

  ‘So why did the phantom author retouch them?’

  ‘To piss us off?’ He sighed. ‘It’s working.’

  Maya nodded. ‘I’ll try this page again but missing out the circles …’

  He picked up his mobile. The last text from Tye had come through hours ago – she should be back by now. But Coldhardt had sent no word, and the hangout was quiet. He read her words for the thirtieth time. On way home. Bad time. Not get easier. Do I want it to.

  Jonah felt his tiredness grip him all the more. Sounded like she was feeling the same way he was. Her strength had always made him feel stronger – she’d always been there to help prop him up, to persuade him he could actually make it through this freaky life. He wished he could hold her right now. That would certainly wake him up …

  ‘These lines aren’t making a new pictogram.’ Maya put down her pencil. ‘Just another doodle from hell.’

  ‘You’re sure you’ve followed the same pattern of rotation and inversion –?’

  ‘Of course I am.’ She shot him a vexed look. ‘It doesn’t work. I really thought you were on to something …’ Distractedly, she traced her fingertips round the edge of her birthmark, as it seemed she often did when thinking. ‘There are no touched-up characters in the appendix. That must mean that the ones we find in the bulk of the manuscript are some kind of key.’

  ‘There you go again,’ said Jonah, ‘wanting to read the end of the book first.’

  She ignored him, chewing on the end of the pencil. ‘I think we’re missing something with the circles.’

  ‘Missing a point to the bloody things …’ Jonah took a gulp of stone-cold coffee. In the sample of five hundred random touched-up words they’d collated, it seemed that certain characters had been traced over more than others – particularly the circular shapes.

  ‘They must be key,’ Maya persisted. ‘In the old rituals, a summoning circle is used to conjure demons, and the symbols drawn around the outside of the circle can protect the mage who summons …’

  ‘Maybe the circles act like spacers,’ he suggested. ‘Telling us to ignore the characters beside them.’

  ‘Or maybe the circles might make up a numerical system by themselves. You know, first one for tens, next one for units …’ Maya looked at the sample in front of her. ‘In which case, maybe the character following each circle is a part of the number.’

  ‘Could be a binary code,’ said Jonah suddenly, sitting up on the bed. ‘That’s all zeros and ones – could be read as circles and downstrokes?’

  ‘Except the zeros are followed by all kind of characters,’ said Maya. ‘Could be coded binary, I guess …’ Her shoulders slumped. ‘Truth is, it could be any counting system. How are we supposed to tell?’

  ‘Maybe it was obvious to the other members of the cell,’ said Jonah. ‘A significant number.’ He turned the clock away from the wall again. ‘Maya, I don’t know about you but my last sleep was drug-induced and not exactly refreshing. Maybe we should think about turning in.’

  ‘There’s three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle,’ she muttered, not taking the hint. ‘And each degree is made up of sixty minutes, and each minute made up of sixty seconds …’

  ‘That’s time, not angles.’

  ‘It’s both! I’m talking about minutes and seconds of arc.’

  Jonah rolled his blurry eyes. ‘That’s just showing off.’

  ‘Blame the ancient Sumerians. They worked out time and geometry back in ancient Mesopotamia – and here we are still using their systems four thousand years later.’ Maya looked at him with that strange crooked smile. ‘Incredible how some things endure …’

  ‘It seems sort of overcomplicated, though, when you think about it,’ Jonah reflected hazily, ‘dividing time and circles up in lumps of twelve and sixty.’

  ‘Not complicated to the Sumerians or the Babylonians. They did all their calculations in base sixty.’ Her eyes widened and she suddenly gasped. ‘The Chinese calendar has the same mathematical basis. And it’s circular – the years are counted and named in cycles of sixty …’ Maya’s pale, freckled face was growing more flushed by the moment. ‘Jonah, we’re on the right track, we’ve got to be!’

  ‘You’re jumping to some pretty wild conclusions here,’ Jonah warned her.

  ‘I’m jumping on your bed!’ she warned him back, leaping over his lap and bouncing up and down in an ecstasy of release, her grin wide and red hair catching in the light. ‘If we find some kind of cyclical pattern in the re-inked characters then it might mean –’

  There was a muffled knock at the door. Maya stopped bouncing as Jonah crossed to open it.

  ‘Jonah,’ breathed Tye, pushing through the doorway and into his arms, making him stagger back inside the room. ‘I thought … I mean, I …’

  ‘Er …’ He returned the hug, selfconsciously. ‘Coldhardt never said you were back.’

  ‘We haven’t told him, yet. There’s stuff we need to –’

  Tye must have sensed his awkwardness, looked up – and now saw Maya sitting down on the edge of the bed. Even with tired eyes, he caught the emotions moving through Tye’s eyes – surprise, confusion. Hurt. And then he saw the livid bruise on her cheek. ‘Hey, what happened to your –’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Tye briskly, heading back towards the door. ‘I thought you’d be alone.’

  ‘Had to kill the time till you were back somehow, didn’t I?’ Jonah grabbed hold of her hand. ‘Uh, working, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, we were just working on the cipher,’ Maya agreed.

  Tye looked at her. ‘On the bed?’

  ‘I was just kind of bouncing on it. I was happy.’ Maya grinned sheepishly. ‘Your boyfriend’s smart, and I think we could be close to a breakthrough with the cipher.’

  ‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ Tye began automatically, ‘we –’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell,’ Maya interrupted. ‘It’s clear that something is between you, but there is nothing between him and me.’

  ‘Of course there isn’t,’ said Jonah hastily, his cheeks flushing.

  ‘You read body language, you can tell.’ Maya shrugged. �
��I’m not lying.’

  Tye stared at her, then glanced back at Jonah. She looked away, put a hand to her forehead. ‘You know, whatever. This is, like, nothing. Nothing on a day like today.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Jonah, going to her.

  ‘Come down and you’ll see,’ she said wearily. ‘If you can tear yourself away, I mean.’

  She left the room. Jonah started after her, then hesitated, looked back at Maya.

  ‘You should go,’ Maya said, but her sympathetic smile faltered as she pointed to the computer. ‘Just hurry back, OK?’

  He mock saluted. ‘Do my best.’ And hope that one day that’s enough, he thought, as he crossed the wood-floored landing after Tye.

  Tye knew that Maya was telling the truth about not being interested in Jonah, and that Jonah wasn’t really into Maya. But as she took the spiral steps down to the hangout, two at a time, she knew also that Jonah could never share himself with her the way he had with that red-haired stranger tonight. He’d often lose himself for days at a time in the world on his screen; that capacity baffled Tye, but she’d found it kind of cute. She loved his quietness, the way he made her feel she could tell him anything.

  But that’s not how you make him feel, is it? she thought darkly. There he was sat with some red-haired stranger who could lose a night with him in just the same way, who talked the same hacker-speak he did. She pictured him laughing with Maya yesterday morning over their early days with water-coolers, or whatever. All it meant to Tye was a cold drink from a plastic cup.

  Because I’m stupid, and they’re smart, she thought unhappily. Because I was smuggling dope while they were taking classes. And though the choices we made and the crowds we hung with all led us here to Coldhardt just the same, where are they going to lead us next?

  Today it felt like the world was raining down around her ears.

  She rejoined Motti, Con and Patch, gathered round the snooker table, laying out the haul from Heidel’s briefcase.

  ‘Is the geek coming, Tye?’ asked Motti.

  Patch sniggered. ‘Give her a chance, Mot, she was only with him twenty seconds.’