Codex

by Adrian Dawson

  Where, in reality, was the difference? The only things that set them apart were the lengths they would go to in order to realise their goals. Both had fervent beliefs and both fought for them to varying degrees. It was a fine line. One that Lara’s killers did not think twice about crossing. They traced her movements too late, Simon had said, that was why their actions transpired to be so drastic.

  261 Dead. Pretty Goddamned drastic.

  He knew that he would do anything in his power to bring Lara’s child back home. When, and if, he found it. What he was going to have to accept, however, was that they (whoever ‘they’ were) were going to do everything within their power to stop him. However ‘drastic’ their next set of actions might transpire to be.

  He climbed wearily out of bed and took a long, hot shower. He would have been in two minds had it been Elizabeth that still occupied his senses, but not them. They were scum and his only desire was to wash the vile stench of them from his body. When he felt a little cleaner he made a light breakfast and prepared to get himself dirty again. He had an eight o’clock with Andy.

  One more knock on the door to that other world.

  * * * * *

  “What is it that you’re not telling me?” Andy said, sipping the first real coffee he had tasted that morning. He had managed half a cup of powdery sludge earlier on, but that had only been in a vain attempt to wake himself up. In reality, all it woke him up to was a sliding scale which started at good coffee, ran swiftly down through cheap and awful coffee and landed at the very bottom of a desperate pile; airline coffee. Even now the taste was clinging to the insides of his mouth like dog hair to a velour car seat.

  Jack, meanwhile, was purposely avoiding eye contact. It showed. “Such as,” he replied.

  Andy smiled. “Credit me with some intelligence. I mean... cults? Why the hell do you of all people need to know about cults?”

  Jack seemed edgy. Too edgy. He was picking at the hairs on his chin. He did that, Andy thought, but only when he was edgy. “We’re developing a new game,” he lied. “I just want to get some background.”

  Andy laughed openly. He lifted his heavy frame from the seat, straightened his three-piece and walked to the cabinet on the back wall, from which he helped himself to a large Havana. He did not bother to offer one over because he knew that, short of celebrating one of IntelliSoft’s many successes, Jack never touched them. They were purely for guests.

  Jack opened his bottom drawer and extracted a small silver ashtray. It looked as though it had never been used but it had. Andy used it every time he visited.

  “That... is... bull... shit, Jack, and you know it,” Andy scorned, labouring every syllable. He waved his hand dismissively. “A, you don’t get involved with the research shit, and B, you have that, what do you call it, FireWorX thing. What was it you said at the launch? The sum total of man’s knowledge to date.” He sniggered to himself. “I liked that, it was catchy. But no, my friend, if all you wanted was background, you or your guys would simply consult your own goddamned oracle. You wouldn’t be asking to tap into mine.”

  He eased himself back into the chair. “What I believe you want, in reality, is the sum total of the F.B.I.’s knowledge and that’s a different thing altogether, isn’t it?” He looked straight at his friend, his insistent eyes tenaciously refusing to have the wool pulled over them. “So, I come back to the same question. What is it that you’re not telling me?”

  “It’s complicated,” Jack said.

  “So’s American History,” Andy sneered, “but I still have a diploma.”

  Jack scowled back. “Yeah, but you cheated.”

  “I’m a politician,” Andy shrugged, as though his cheap excuse would somehow make the diploma well deserved. “We do that kind of thing.”

  A cloud of silence occupied the centre of the room, waiting for the heat to build to a degree where it might rain confessions. Jack knew that he was in a no-win situation. He could not just ask his friend to pull strings with the F.B.I. without offering at least some form of explanation. By the same token, he did not feel ready to tell Andy everything. Coughing the whole story at this point would lead to an investigation. An imminent and very official investigation. One that, in all likelihood, would foul up any chance he ever had of finding his daughter’s child. Alive.

  But he had to offer him something.

  “Between these four walls?” he said tentatively.

  “Absolutely,” Andy promised.

  Jack knew that politicians did that a lot as well. He took a walk to the glass wall, looked out over the campus, the only part of the world he now felt he had any control over, and took a deep, whistling breath. “I think Lara might have hooked up with some kind of religious group....” he conferred, his delivery nothing less than cautious.

  “A cult, you mean?” Andy interrupted.

  Jack turned around and nodded. “Yes Andy, a cult. And now I need to find them. Quickly.”

  Andy was still less than convinced. He knew that he was still missing an important piece of the equation. “Why the hell would you want to go and do a thing like that? She’s gone and, unless we’re talking about Mil’el here, they had nothing to do with it...? So what the hell do you need to find them for?”

  As a Senator, Andy had spent a long time composing carefully worded responses from the wrong side of leading questions. It felt good to turn the tables, even if it was on his own friend.

  “I checked with forensics in Germany,” Jack said. “Lara had a child.” A desperate pause. “And I think they’ve got it.”

  He tried to shrug an indifference but it looked exactly like the two things it was; weak and forced.

  “Shit,” was all that Andy could initially think to say, more of an instinctive gasp than a composed response. Then he started to think things over and his eyes curled into focused interrogation. “What in the hell made you check with forensics?”

  Jack’s impatience burst through. He wanted Andy to get the information he needed, not to spend the morning discussing semantics. “For God’s sake, Andy, that’s not important. I did and that’s all there is to it. Now I need the F.B.I. to find the bastards who have my grandson, alright.”

  “Grand..son,” Andy said, his suspicions suddenly pushed into overdrive. “Who told you it was a boy? Forensics?”

  Jack ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. He’d just lost his temper and fucked up. He took a moment to calm himself down in the hope that it would stop him fucking up again. “Look Andy, I’m asking for help here. Are you going to give it me or not?”

  “Sure,” Andy said impassively. “I just want to be well briefed before I do, that’s all.”

  Jack leaned against the glass. Annoyed again, but this time a little more controlled. More deliberate. “Look Andy, when I’ve got something concrete, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, can you get what I need or not?”

  Andy nodded. “Probably. If you can tell me exactly what it is you need.”

  Jack walked back to his desk and opened the top left-hand drawer. From inside he pulled a single sheet of paper, handing it over to his eager friend. On it was a simple handwritten list. The senator took one look at it and scowled.

  “What’s this?” he said.

  “Key phrases,” Jack replied. “I know there are lots of cults and I know they all have their individual beliefs and traits. All I want is information on those about whom these phrases keep cropping up. That is how the F.B.I. work, isn’t it?”

  Andy read aloud. “Heresy; John the Baptist as Messiah; the virgin birth; Jesus surviving the crucifixion; Jesus getting married; Jesus having children; Abraham; a new Saviour; Armageddon; the line of David; Ephesus; the seven churches of Asia; the Book of Revelation; Eternal Life; Reincarnation; Jean Cocteau and Leonardo Da sodding Vinci?“ He looked at Jack open-mouthed. “What the hell is this shit?”

  “It’s the kind of hell and shit that cults preach,” Jack said, as though it were obvious. “Well...? Do you think you can get
the F.B.I. to look into it for me?”

  Andy did not bother to finish the cigar. It had been free so he forcefully ground the bulk of it into the ashtray. “Don’t worry about it,” he said with a smile. “I’m a politician.”

  He stood up to leave, winking gently as he did. “We do that kind of thing.”

  children of israel

  Exodus 2:25

  In the whispering night breeze Zebulun opened the fourth of his envelopes for the final time and, in the unnatural beam of a miniature MagLite, looked again at the comprehensive instructions it contained. They gave him the time, the place, the hour, the minute and even the method, all detailed in his own specific code, one that only he and The Abraham understood implicitly. No two Ministers used the same coding method. No two Ministers could ever be linked.

  Now that he was one hundred percent certain that he was in the right place at the right time and that the method he would use was committed to memory, he could destroy the paper before he set about his work. That way, if he was caught or killed, there would be nothing to indicate that he was operating under the command of another. He would be written off as a rogue assassin whose motives would forever remain unclear.

  Timing was imperative to The Abraham. It was the primary tool he employed and he could use it to engineer events with the practised skill of a magician. There was rarely such a thing as an isolated act in his eyes, everything that he did and said was subliminally and intricately linked. An event on one side of the globe would be timed to such perfection that he could control the instant at which news arrived on the other. The reaction to the news would trigger the next pre-ordained link in the chain and so on. This would happen for many months or many years, an almost incomprehensibly complex sequence of events whose ultimate outcome The Abraham would be able to predict to the minute.

  It was true magic. Sleight of hand on a global scale.

  Zebulun removed a solid gold cigarette lighter from his black combat trousers and held it below the paper. It took two attempts to achieve a flame, but when it did he watched as it flickered in the breeze which rose through the darkness from the valley below. It danced like a genie released from its ancient lamp, the fire breathing and stretching as though attaining new life. Zebulun remembered the day that he had been offered the lighter as a gift, the day that he too achieved a new life. The day when, ready to accept his own inevitable death on the blood soaked floor of a luxury yacht, God’s own servant had offered to him the light that would change his life forever.

  A clear autumn day. Nineteen years ago, when Kalifa Halil had just turned twenty-four. As an operative for The Children of Israel from the day he was strong enough to carry a weapon he fought for God and for the homeland of His chosen people. He never questioned what he had to do, and never questioned whether he might survive the task. He was a foot soldier, one man in a history of oppression against the fight for a territory. The things he needed to do were important, he himself was not. He fought for a cause which he firmly believed was more important than life itself.

  Seamus O’Brien, on the other hand, held no such elevated principles. He was a mercenary who fought only for money. True, he had fought for God in his time, but only when God had offered the highest price. One day, however, Seamus O’Brien had made a damning mistake. He had killed eight Children of Israel. For a price. The death of the men had remained unpunished for four years.

  Until the day that Kalifa Halil - visiting Cyprus to purchase twelve Uzi sub-machine guns for his cause - had seen the Irishman casually drinking tea in a waterfront café in Kyrenia. The tattoo on his right arm, which demonstrated his pre-expulsion allegiance to the Provisional IRA, left little room for doubt that it was him. Even before he had made the coded request to his people, Kalifa had known that Seamus O’Brien was going to die for his crimes against God that day.

  Extensive checking with those who continually observed Cyprus from the many shadows of a Mediterranean sun showed that Seamus’ arrival had been expected; the rumours were that he was to meet some new financiers on a yacht in Kyrenia’s harbour. The rumours said that the financiers were P.L.O.

  Kalifa had an intriguing choice to make: He could avenge his martyred brethren the easy way, by approaching the Irishman on the street and delivering one quick head shot, or he could take a chance on killing them all. The Irishman and the money men. He could sever a major artery within P.L.O. funding at the same time as he offered Seamus a far more literal courtesy.

  He had maintained covert observation of the Irishman for the next four hours. At five to one, he did indeed board a yacht bearing the name ‘Eternity III’. Watching surreptitiously from a bar across the road, Kalifa studied the craft and noted five indiscreetly armed men permanently on the deck. An additional three occasionally appeared from below. How many more were actually on board he could not tell. Which was why, in addition to a silenced semi-automatic handgun, he was pleased that he had also brought along one of the Uzis.

  Twenty minutes passed. He finished his drink, smoked a cigarette and then walked slowly along the jetty adjacent to the boat. He kept the Uzi slung under his long coat and the handgun, his trigger finger permanently in position, nestled in his right hand pocket. At the foot of the boarding ramp he had paused and feigned confusion for several minutes before approaching the deck guards and asking if they might know where the ‘Mystère’ was berthed. Initially his request for directions had been ignored but his persistence soon aroused the high level of suspicion he required. When all five men were congregated together before him, their jackets opened just enough to display the quiet threat of their weapons, Kalifa had struck hard and fast. Five clean, silenced shots and five cleanly silenced men.

  He was aboard.

  Once on-deck he had reached into his coat and removed the Uzi. Now each hand held a weapon. If he encountered an individual below decks he would utilise the Smith & Wesson Mark-22 Model-0 into which he had loaded green-tipped parabellum rounds. They would be effective only at close range but, in these circumstances, that was all he would need. The silencer would perhaps buy him a little more time; something else he might need. If, however, he encountered a group then he would have no option but to resort to the explosive firepower of the sub-machine gun and blaze as fast a trail of destruction as he could from there forth.

  Throughout his slow descent into the unknown he checked every door along the main corridor. He encountered nobody. God was watching over him that day.

  The furthest reaches of the corridor yielded a door, one to a room much larger than the others. Through the brass edged, porthole-style window Kalifa could see inside. He quietly positioned himself to one side and peered through as quickly as possible. In that split second he had memorised the position of every man inside. They did not see him.

  The three men who had visited the deck earlier were there, along with Seamus and two others. The Irishman was seated a good four feet to the left of the main group. That was good. It meant that he, and his death, could be suitably segregated. At the time Kalifa had looked, Seamus had been leaning back into his chair.

  He had been counting money. And laughing. Kalifa was incensed. Wiping the smile from Seamus’ face would be his payment. The others would be his bonus. He prayed to God, counted to three and burst through; an impenetrable blanket of death spreading before him. Five men died instantly, but his skills left the Irishman a few final moments in which to realise his fate.

  “Who-da feck are you?” he had said, his accent guttural, strong and powered by shock.

  “We,” Kalifa had corrected, “are the Children of Israel. We avenge our brothers.” Another swift burst of fire had killed the man instantly and Kalifa’s task had been complete. He had delivered the wrath of many, and the many were within him that day.

  Two deafening blasts.

  Two more gunshots.

  Kalifa’s body slammed to the floor, his legs engulfed by a searing pain that spread until it attacked every nerve ending in his body. The Uzi was thrown
many feet to his right by the force of his descent and the handgun landed about a foot away from his quivering left hand. As he lay helpless on the floor he could see blood running across the polished boards around his feet and had known instantly that it was his own. There had been somebody else in the room, somebody out of sight through the small window.

  And he had been too eager to wait. Too eager to check.

  He had acted with a haste fuelled by hatred and had paid the price. The man had shot each of his legs and Kalifa had known in that instant that he was a dead man. Still, the Irishman was dead and his own task was complete. He would join his slaughtered brothers knowing that he had avenged them. He waited patiently for the fatal head shot.

  The death blow.

  It never came.

  It gave him time, and time was a useful weapon. Eventually he had fought back against his pain, tried to focus his mind and grabbed the handgun. It was all he could think to do. He looked up and his finger tightened; ready to shoot.

  Usually, time to grab his weapon meant time to kill his prey but now, for the first time ever, Kalifa had failed to pull the trigger. He was seeing his attacker for the first time and there was something about this man. Something strange. His stance, his face; his cold dark eyes. Everything. A thousand icy shards pounded into Kalifa’s soul and chilled every nerve ending he possessed. Looking into the man’s eyes he was paralysed, his body frozen as though he was already a corpse.

  Still training his own weapon on his helpless victim, this man offered no return of expression or emotion. No fear, no hatred, no pleasure and no pain.

  Either man could have fired and ended the stand-off. Neither man did.

  “Place your weapon on the floor,” the man had said calmly, his trigger finger threateningly taut, “and I may allow you the privilege of continued life.”