Codex

by Adrian Dawson

  The words echoed, first through the church and then through Jack’s mind; entering his head with a violence that he could never have envisaged. He felt every function in his body slamming to a halt. His heart, his pulse and his breath all ceased to exist and for an instant it felt as though time itself had done the same. He never knew it was possible to be so completely paralysed by words alone.

  In stark contrast the man turned away again, the air of a disinterested father returning to his Sunday paper. “What you don’t seem to realise is that Flight 320 was blown from the sky for one reason and one reason only... because your daughter was on board.”

  The sentence had been an ominous rumble. In one instant it seemed to resonate throughout the church, in another it seemed to surround Jack like a dark cloak. As he spoke, the man’s voice seemed to descend an octave until his words became long snarls. They prowled like wolves through the aisles and crept slowly to Jack’s feet before leaping upward into his head. Once inside they began a gnawing attack on his senses.

  “She could not be allowed to reach you in New York because you would then have known about the boy and sought to rescue him.” He shrugged indifferently. “They traced her movements too late and it is that fact alone which resulted in their actions transpiring to be so drastic.”

  For a moment Jack did not know how to react. Every ounce of blood drained toward the floor and he stood as open mouthed as when he had first been informed of Lara’s death. He felt weak. Perhaps he even felt a little scared.

  Scared that there were things - important things - of which he was completely unaware.

  “You’re... you’re saying that Lara had a child? Without me knowing? And you’re actually trying to insinuate that two hundred and sixty one people were murdered just to stop her coming home? To what...? To tell me about it?”

  The man - Simon - stood and faced him again, positioning himself in such a way that his sharp black outline and cold stare deliberately obscured the desperately anaemic symbolism of the mural. He remained half in shadow, one side of his body and face in silhouette, the other still visible in the rich blue light.

  “You may not believe what I tell you now, Mr. Bernstein, but you will... because the sequence is very simple.” He calmly picked up the leather folder. “First I must convince you that neither Dalkamouni or indeed anyone else within Mil’el planted that bomb. If I know you, and I think I do, you will then subsequently want to know who was really responsible and you will accept my terms. I will then give you information – information which will contain clues to the whereabouts both of your daughter’s killers and your daughter’s child. Throughout all this I know that ultimately you are going to perform every DNA test available on that child before you hand over what I want. So you see... my prize is in your hands and I am prepared to accept the challenge. The question is, knowing that the key to your own flesh and blood is in mine.., are you?”

  With every word the man uttered, Jack’s shock and anger edged further into the realms of focused rage, eventually bursting from within in a thunderous blast of contempt. “People died, you sick bastard. Over two hundred people died and you want to give me clues.” He shook his head in overwhelming disbelief as his tone was pulled under rolling waves of despair by the weight of the resignation he now felt.

  “For God’s sake,” he offered lamely, “this is not some kind of game.”

  The man smiled with unaffected confidence, his cold stare firing a sharpened blast of chilled air which pierced Jack’s taut skin like an arrow.

  “Oh but it is, Mr. Bernstein, it is the ultimate game.” The smile grew wider; more sadistic. “And, when you take this folder, you will have precisely fourteen days in which to decide whether or not you would like to play.”

  the plague be spread

  Leviticus 13:51

  Eight hours after the gifts had been presented to the Child and three hundred miles from the nearest man made structure, the two men looked uncomfortable and out of place. Wearing all-in-one chemical suits with protective hoods despite the searing heat, they moved like astronauts on Mars against the backdrop of the Australian outback as they made their final preparations.

  Moving from the black Land Rover which had brought them to this remote location, one of the men walked toward a wooden pen containing twenty-eight sheep. Though the vehicle, like the sheep, was owned by one of the largest organisations in the world, it possessed neither visible markings nor registration plates. Even the VIN and chassis numbers had been filed away should anything go wrong or there was an unwanted visit from the authorities. Nothing could ever link the experiment here today to those who had initially commissioned it.

  The man stopped beside a high stake topped with a spinning cowl and carefully connected a portable computer to a five-pin socket embedded within the base. As he worked, the sheep moved anxiously away from him toward the furthest reaches of the pen, bleating gently.

  He wondered just how astute such dumb animals were; whether or not they sensed something in the air. Not that there was anything they could do about it even if they did.

  Happy with the data he had collected, he opened a metal strongbox and removed a blood bag from the padded interior. But this bag contained no blood. The liquid inside was completely colourless and, he had been informed, odourless. Treating the bag with extreme caution he moved toward the pole marked ‘SSE’ and suspended it from a nail which had been driven into the post already. He then retreated one hundred feet backward into the wind as his colleague climbed aboard the Land Rover and drove it around to join him.

  “What’s the reading?” he asked, leaning close and raising his voice so that his question carried through the plexi-glass visor.

  “Four-point-six-eight, south-south-east,” the man replied.

  The other man nodded and moved to the rear of the Land Rover, opening the tailgate and retrieving a high powered Browning rifle with telescopic sight. Grabbing a box of shells he moved back to the front of the vehicle and placed them on the bonnet. Then, after struggling to open the box with his protective gloves, he took five shells and inserted them one by one into the open chamber of the weapon.

  “Are we go then?” he asked. The readings man nodded and took a few steps back.

  Leaning across the black paintwork he raised the sight in front of his visor. Then, gently placing his gloved finger through the oversized trigger guard, he lowered the barrel until he could see the bag sitting centrally between the cross-hairs. Almost as soon as he began to squeeze the trigger he felt a tap on his shoulder and looked up. The man who had taken the readings was now pointing into the distance.

  Following the angle of his colleague’s outstretched arm he saw a trail of dust growing in size over the gently curving line of the distant horizon. “Shit,” he said. “Who the fuck is that?”

  As the vehicle came closer they could see that it was another black Land Rover; identical to their own. Which could only mean one thing; Simeon had returned from the Assembly and had decided to watch the tests being conducted on his territory first hand.

  When the vehicle finally skidded to a halt, its occupant clambered out wearing the same style of chemical suit as his employees. He strode purposefully across the dusty earth, studied the pole and saw that the bag was still intact. Then he looked upward into the sky and all around. Today was a clear day with only the slightest breeze. He did not care about the exact wind speed, he could tell at a glance that conditions were perfect.

  “Shoot it,” he said bluntly, his Swedish accent stretching his words like a slowed recording. The man with the Browning took his position once more.

  The plexi-glass visor made it difficult for him to see effectively through the sight and it was almost thirty seconds before he started to apply pressure to the trigger. A few moments later a shot rang out across the barren landscape and the subdued protests of the sheep increased to gentle panic.

  The bag remained intact.

  Simeon sighed, steaming the front of his visor,
and tore the gun from the crouching man’s hand. Holding it toward the pen with only one arm he released a second shot and the bag exploded, showering the liquid over the red earth. Slowly it began to steam, evaporating into the air.

  Within a few seconds the bleating of the sheep had escalated to fever pitch. They began to run in erratic circles, leaping over each other with voices that were becoming increasingly strained. This continued for around thirty seconds until one by one they gave up and fell quivering to the floor. Within two minutes all twenty-eight were silent. Dead.

  “Come,” Simeon said curtly, walking toward the pen to inspect the carcasses, the rifle still in his hand.

  “The suits...?” one of the men questioned, dubious about being downwind of the now flickering bag.

  “The suits are fine,” he replied and tentatively they all followed. Throughout the walk they maintained a respectable, and much safer, distance behind their leader.

  Once inside the pen, Simeon crouched low toward one of the sheep and saw that it was still suffering involuntary muscle spasms, but was most definitively dead. The black domes of its eyes stared from its quivering body, their wide glare now locked into a permanent mask of disbelief. Twenty-eight adult sheep in under two minutes, he thought, looking to the man who had attempted the first shot and nodding his approval.

  “Is this the first test we’ve completed?” he asked the man who had fluffed the initial shot. He had not yet visited any of the other sites on the two hundred thousand acres of Australian bush farm that Eternity had purchased the previous year. The man nodded.

  Simeon seemed pensive for a moment. “I still need a full test,” he added, looking around at the bodies littered on top of each other. Through his visor he could see that the man did not understand. As far as he had been concerned today had been a full test.

  “What do you mean?” the man asked.

  “A full test,” he reiterated, stressing the words. The man simply shrugged and looked to is colleague in the hope that he might deliver an answer.

  With controlled nonchalance, Simeon placed his back to him, then turned, swinging his body with as much force as he could muster. The butt of the rifle caught the man’s visor with all of its delivered force. It shattered and fell to the ground, leaving the man staring with shocked disbelief at the pieces as they settled in the dirt around his feet.

  “A full test,” he repeated for the third time, no discernible influx of emotion colouring his voice. He could see that the man’s eyes were already starting to redden and moisten, and his nose was beginning to excrete a stream of mucus tinged with blood. Within half a minute, wide eyed and bemused, he collapsed to his knees, coughing and spluttering. He grasped at the earth and tried to grasp at Simeon’s feet but his strength was fading fast. Within two minutes his temporarily increased heart rate was as motionless as that of the sheep.

  The other man watched with abject horror, flinching backward in fear as Simeon turned to face him. “Get the phosphorous and burn them all,” he said coldly, handing over the rifle and walking back toward his Land Rover.

  Thirteen months after first experimenting with the mixing of phosphorus trichloride, isopropyl alcohol and sodium fluoride at extremely high temperatures, Simeon’s biological team had finally produced the desired result; Sarin - a powerful new toy for Zebulun to play with.

  Next to VX, Sarin was one of the most virulent and swiftly lethal nerve agents on the face of the earth.

  visions...

  Daniel 1:17

  Joaquim smiled excitedly. “How many?”

  He had been so very sure that he would miss the men this evening. Mr. Mendez had kept him right until six and it was well after quarter past now. The workmen usually left for the day at six on the dot but the middle-aged man had told him when he had arrived that a few had stayed late to complete some units. They were getting ‘over time’, whatever that was. He presumed that it probably meant that even though they had worked very hard, they were still taking far too long and had gone ‘over’ their allotted ‘time’. It probably also meant that they had to work unpaid until they had made the time up. IntelliSoft must be very difficult people to work for, he thought, and yet the man was still smiling. It was as though he actually enjoyed being told he was getting ‘over time’.

  The man had also told him just how many there would be, yet still he could not believe it. Now he was smiling back and telling him for a second time. Two hundred and fifty in ten waves of twenty five each. Once the first twenty-five chrome cylinders were ready to fire, the pyrotechnics experts would be preparing the second twenty-five. With that many fireworks the sky would be ablaze with colour for at least half an hour.

  “And they will go off when I solve the final puzzle?” Joaquim asked cheekily.

  The workman smiled and removed his hard hat, wiping the sweat which had built steadily across his forehead throughout the long day. Each of his pronounced wrinkles was now highlighted by a thin strip of water trapped in a natural valley. He wryly shook his head at the young boy’s confidence and the reached out and ragged his hair. “They will go off,” he said, crouching low to look him in the eye, “when the child who wins solves the final puzzle.” He winked.

  Joaquim just nodded. He could not wait to set them off.

  The man looked at his watch and told Joaquim that he really must be getting back to work. Then he added that if the young boy wanted to come down to the site really early on Saturday, perhaps before eight, he might just be able to persuade his supervisor to show him around inside. Joaquim’s eyes widened with added excitement, though in reality he could not make up his mind whether to feel happy or sad. Of course he wanted to look around, but today was Tuesday. Saturday seemed a long, long way away.

  Nevertheless, he would be there well before eight.

  It was very clever, he thought. The American people had created a ‘FireNet’ system and then used it to link a global ‘FireWorX’ education system. Then, when Joaquim had solved all the puzzles on launch day, they would send real fireworks up into the skies. They were so very clever, the Americans. Except when it came to creating puzzles, of course. Their puzzles were unbelievably easy to solve.

  He looked at the digital display board again:

  26D, 15H, 43M

  Time to go.

  * * * * *

  It was almost eight o’clock before Jack was finally sinking his aching body deep into the comfort of first class leather on the flight back to California; tired, angry and confused. Not since the instant that he had first seen Elizabeth laid in the hospital bed, the tubes trying vainly to feed fresh life into her nose and mouth, had he felt so ill at ease with the world’s capricious nature and so uncharacteristically unsure as to how he should react to it.

  Two things burned at him, and more specifically at his ego. The first was to know that Simon had really only wanted one thing from the meeting and the second was to know that he had succeeded. Jack had played right into the man’s expensively-manicured hands and come away with more questions than answers. He did not know who Simon was, who he represented, what was so special about the book or why he wanted it so badly. More importantly, he did not know how Simon knew so much about Lara, even before her fatal flight.

  Lara had been travelling on false documents it seemed. Where and how she had obtained them Jack would probably never know, but it had at least served to keep the fact that such a high profile traveller had been aboard the plane out of the public domain. What worried Jack in hindsight was that a group of people who described themselves as little more than ‘an interested party’ had known about his daughter’s flight in the first place. Limiting that information to people who could be trusted had involved a great deal of political favour-calling and string-pulling on Jack’s part. He was certain that there were no leaks, so it begged him to ask himself whether Simon was somebody Lara had known before the flight.

  He might never know.

  The fact that somebody was trying to use his daughter’s death
to get something they wanted was worse than infuriating, but then so was the shivering feeling of uncertainty it had left him with. His initial reaction had been to walk away, to leave the man to play his sick games alone, but there was no way to do that once a grandchild had been mentioned. He had wanted to, of course, more than anything, but just two words made such a thing impossible. His mind was spinning the same question over and over: ‘What if?’ What if he was being offered a second chance...

  Doubtful.

  But he had taken the file. Just to take a look, nothing more. Simon was somehow aware that Lara had been on that flight and there was nothing that Jack could do to change that. Denying it was a waste of time, but Simon knowing was no longer the problem; Simon himself was the problem. He looked like a sicko, talked like a sicko and only a sicko would have put time and effort into composing the kind of puzzle that had drawn Jack to the church in the first place. Now, what worried him most was the realisation that it only needed one sicko. In the wrong hands, knowledge that the last living member of the super-wealthy Jack Bernstein’s family was gone would make the word ‘leverage’ flash like a twelve-foot high neon sign. This man wanted something. Badly. So badly that he was prepared to barter with Lara’s killers in order to obtain it. How far would he go if Jack did not comply?

  Of course there was no god-damned child. Jack Bernstein would have known if his daughter had given birth.

  What if...?

  Over and over. Spinning through his head like leaves swirling on a cornered breeze.

  What. If.

  There were two things, and two things only, that Jack was prepared to do; hopefully to prove Simon wrong. The first would be to study the details he had been given - but for the duration of his flight home and no longer. The truth was he had nothing better to do and nowhere better to focus his mind. Second, he would Email the forensic examiners in Germany and ask them to investigate whether or not his daughter had ever given birth to a child. He knew that he had both the required pull and a special access code with which to request that kind of information. In the days after the accident, via Andy, he had all-but demanded it.