Thieves Like Us 01 - Thieves Like Us

by Stephen Cole

  ‘So it’s like the prescription for the Amrita,’ Con reasoned. ‘They both have a part of it, but neither has the whole thing.’

  ‘Will Samraj be able to translate the cipher without Jonah?’ asked Patch, rather touchingly.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Coldhardt simply. ‘She will go to any lengths to secure the information she needs.’

  Jonah glanced at Tye again, but she was still looking down at the table. He sensed that something was wrong, but didn’t have a clue what it might be.

  Con, meanwhile, briskly summed up the situation: ‘So now we must find her bits of the lekythos as well as her fragments of the Amrita prescription, yes? That is, if she really has them.’

  Coldhardt smiled enigmatically. ‘Oh, I am quite certain they exist.’

  ‘How come?’ said Motti.

  ‘I know Samraj of old,’ was his only answer. ‘But Con is right. Which is why we now have two priority assignments. First, we must steal, or at least photograph, the scraps of prescription she keeps at her house. Jonah, you will accompany Motti and Patch to Florence.’

  ‘And help them break into that mansion?’ Jonah wavered. ‘It’s one thing breaking into a museum or something, but when it’s someone’s home …’

  ‘If it helps ease your conscience, I believe Samraj stole those fragments in the first place. It is very doubtful that any police force will involve itself in this affair.’

  Jonah didn’t have to look at Motti to know a told-you-so stare was being tossed his way. ‘So are we meant to be looking out for the other bits of the lekythos too?’

  ‘No.’ Coldhardt steepled his fingers. ‘Wherever Samraj is, she will be having them tested, examined … pored over in detail.’

  ‘So me and Tye take the second assignment, yes?’ said Con brightly.

  ‘You will take the plane and travel to the Serpens building in Aqaba that our cultist friends so recently frequented.’ Coldhardt filled the fourth and final screen with a map of the area – Aqaba was situated at the top of the fat boot of the Middle East, very close to the border of Egypt. ‘You will …explore the premises. See if you can find what’s happened to the lekythos, where it might have gone. Join me here at 1800 hours for a full briefing. Motti, we’ll run over your strategy for the mansion job at 1900.’ He paused. ‘In the meantime, I have one or two private calls I need to make. Jonah, return here in thirty minutes. I want you to give me your first thoughts on a strategy for cracking the lekythos cipher.’ He smiled round at the table. ‘You may go, my children.’

  Tye rose and crossed quickly to the door. She hesitated in the doorway, glancing back at Coldhardt as though something was still bugging her. But he was staring at his screens, apparently lost in thought.

  As she slipped from the underground room, Jonah quickened his step to catch up. ‘How’s that shoulder now?’

  ‘Better, thanks,’ she said.

  ‘So what else is up?’

  She looked away. ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘I saw you in there,’ he persisted. ‘Something’s wrong. Care to share?’

  ‘Yes, you look glum, sweets.’ Con had joined them in the lift, Motti and Patch close behind her. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Tye muttered, with just the tiniest warning look at Jonah. ‘I could just really do without another long-haul to the Middle East, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s not Coldhardt’s fault the cultists took the funeral vase to Aqaba,’ said Con as the lift pushed them serenely upwards to rejoin the castle corridor. ‘If we’d done our jobs properly in Cairo –’

  ‘Oh, if we’d done our jobs, huh?’ said Motti, rolling his eyes. ‘Poor ol’ Con, shown up in front of the old man. I suppose if I’d let you go into that lockup, the lekythos would be all ours, right?’

  ‘I never said that.’

  ‘No, you didn’t have to.’

  ‘Oh, just stop it,’ Tye snapped, ‘all of you.’ She pushed past Jonah to get out of the concealed lift, stalking off down the castle corridor. The patches of late afternoon sun through the lead-glass windows were like spotlights tracking her progress, and she put on a good show: aloof and weary. But Jonah couldn’t help feeling that this was about more than just tiredness, whatever she said. That something was up.

  The question was: what?

  Chapter Eleven

  Jonah wandered the grounds by himself till it was time to return to the planning room. Part of him wanted to go rushing to his room like a kid on his birthday, eager to see what Daddy had bought him. Another part of him dreaded to think what gift might be waiting – and what his acceptance of it might signify. He felt uneasy, out of his depth.

  When it was time, he returned to Coldhardt’s junior hub feeling like a schoolboy summoned to the headmaster. But the old man seemed in a chipper mood, and greeted him warmly. One on one, he was a different person. He had a way of making you feel you were the centre of his world, worthy of all his attention. Jonah could well understand how the others had fallen under the spell of this man.

  Unfortunately, he found he didn’t have much he could tell Coldhardt about the cipher. With the age of it, he guessed it must be character substitution like the Spartan scytale, but he didn’t recognise any of the characters this time. It didn’t appear to be any kind of alphabet – at least not a complete one.

  ‘I’ll run a couple of algorithms on it in combination,’ Jonah said. ‘Maybe in 24 hours we’ll have something.’

  ‘Well, if anyone can crack this,’ said Coldhardt, ‘I believe you can.’

  The affirmation made him uncomfortable. It tapped into the way it had been with his foster dad when they’d been setting up the business. Talking Derek through each step he was taking, swapping clever ideas for pats on the head …

  ‘Can I believe in you?’ Jonah asked.

  Coldhardt looked at him. ‘If you find it hard to trust me, then trust my acumen. I invest my time and my money very carefully. And I look after the things that are valuable to me.’ He smiled. ‘You have entered my family now.’

  ‘I’m not a child. I’m seventeen.’

  ‘We don’t outgrow the need for family, Jonah. Call it whatever you want, but you have a home with us here.’

  The words were beguiling, but Jonah set his mouth, said nothing.

  ‘You’ve been made to feel worthless your whole life,’ said Coldhardt with sudden fervour, ‘by petty people with small minds and no ambition.’

  ‘And you have plenty of ambition,’ said Jonah quietly. ‘Enough for the two of us, right?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I’ve achieved so much in my long life. And yet there is still so much more to accomplish, before …’ He glanced back at the sinister statuette on his desk. ‘You’re a good investment, Jonah. I know you are. Now, go and get some sleep.’ He gestured to the door with a charming smile. Jonah got up to leave, gratefully.

  ‘And Jonah … All I ask is that you give of your best. I shan’t fail you in return.’

  Against his better judgement, Jonah turned in the doorway. ‘The experts you had before us. What happened to them?’

  Coldhardt fixed him with his wintry stare. ‘You can never plan the future by the past, lad.’

  Jonah nodded, awkwardly. Then he left the room, without a backwards glance.

  More walking, more deliberating. Picturing what might be waiting for him in his room. Money? Another computer? Jonah watched the setting sun soak the lustrous sweeps of the Tuscan hillsides with brilliant golden light, until it had all but ebbed away and night was impatient to fall.

  When he returned to his room, he found a black velvet pouch on his pillow. He picked it up warily. It felt empty – no, something was there, small and hard. He shook the pouch into the palm of his hand.

  A single diamond fell out, winking and gleaming in the dappled sunlight through the window. Jonah stared at it. He hadn’t imagined anything like this. It was like no gemstone he had ever seen. A scintilla of darkness seemed trapped inside it, a gauzy, glittering skein of mist.
The gem had to be worth a small fortune. Or a massive one, for all he knew.

  ‘So you got it, then?’

  Jonah jumped, turned to find Tye standing in his doorway. He hadn’t heard her come in. ‘It’s a diamond,’ he said, shell-shocked.

  ‘Kind of. It’s a smokestone. Incredibly rare. Incredibly precious.’ She smiled. ‘We’ve all got one. Coldhardt’s way of telling us we’ve proved ourselves to him.’

  ‘And I guess he has proved himself to you?’

  ‘Ten times over,’ she said flatly. ‘Anyway, I just came to say it’s been agreed – things kick off tomorrow. We’re having dinner at ten, in the big hall. Motti wants to talk over this mansion job with you right after.’

  ‘OK. Fine.’ Jonah stared down at the diamond in his hand. ‘How’d your briefing with Coldhardt go?’

  ‘Seems a straightforward job. Find the lekythos, find the Chrysler, see if we can dig up anything on what the acolytes were doing there.’

  ‘No more bad vibes from the old guy, like earlier?’

  She sighed. ‘Will you drop it, Jonah?’

  ‘Were there?’

  ‘No.’ Tye sighed. ‘Not really. It’s nothing I can put my finger on. I’m just a little on edge.’

  He crossed over to her. ‘Tell me about it?’

  She looked into his eyes. ‘When I asked him about Samraj this afternoon, about whether she was in Jordan, or at home in Florence …’

  ‘He told you he didn’t know,’ Jonah recalled. ‘Which is kind of weird. I mean, if he could follow the Chrysler with fake plates, then surely he should have known where Samraj –’

  ‘He didn’t say he didn’t know where she was,’ Tye interrupted him. ‘He said he really couldn’t tell me.’

  ‘Same difference, surely?’

  ‘Is it?’ She looked troubled. ‘Coldhardt’s good with words. He needs to be. I’m the walking lie detector, right? So maybe he really couldn’t tell me. It was like he was …’ she struggled for the words. ‘Like he was deflecting the question. Like he didn’t want to get drawn into the whole thing about where she was.’

  Jonah nodded. ‘Because you might know he was lying.’

  ‘Maybe.’ She sighed. ‘Or maybe I’m just ultra-paranoid. I’m tired as hell, I know that – I’m probably worrying when there’s no need.’

  ‘I hope so.’ Jonah smiled ruefully. ‘You’re not exactly making me feel better about tomorrow’s little assignment.’

  ‘Don’t worry about the job. Coldhardt wouldn’t send us into anything he didn’t think we could handle.’ Tye half-smiled, closed his fingers round the jewel in his palm. ‘Whatever else he might be, he’s no fool. Like smokestones, we’re not easy to replace.’

  ‘But you reckon he has a fair idea where Samraj is, don’t you?’ said Jonah. ‘He just doesn’t want to tell us.’

  Tye nodded.

  ‘Why, for God’s sake?’

  The look in her eyes reminded him of the smoky glitter of the diamond. ‘I have no idea,’ she whispered.

  The next day, Jonah learned why Tye was usually designated driver.

  Motti was a maniac. His idea of driving was to floor the accelerator, aim the silver-grey Merc down the middle of the autostrade and hope for the best. He had some gadget built into the dash that picked up on speed cops and cameras, and so every now and then he would stamp on the brake, sending Jonah and Patch halfway through the windscreen before their belts locked. Patch barely reacted, too absorbed in his Game Boy Advance SP.

  ‘Once I start I can’t stop,’ he explained, eyes glued to the little screen. ‘Or else I puke.’

  ‘You’re gonna puke anyway,’ Motti retorted, razzing past some startled senior citizens in a minibus. ‘You always hurl.’

  Jonah grimaced. ‘Why don’t we cut back on the puke-talk?’ But at least his fears of flying upchuck and horrific car-crash injuries were taking his mind off the burgling field trip that awaited him.

  Coldhardt had marked the mansion on the map. It stood on the outskirts of Florence, in the exclusive, sought-after hills of Bellosguardo. They squealed to a halt about a mile away, in some quaint little hamlet overrun with big hire cars. Once Jonah’s legs had stopped shaking and Patch had paused to throw up on the bonnet of a Daimler, they made their way like wide-eyed tourists through orchards and olive groves until they had a good view of their target – or the perimeter of the place at least. The actual house lay entirely hidden beyond high walls, just as Motti had said.

  ‘Good job we’re superheroes,’ said Motti, unfolding a plan of the place from his rucksack.

  ‘But we’re not going in till tonight, right?’ said Jonah nervously.

  ‘Jeez, geek, I thought I made it clear enough. How many times do I need to go over it?’

  ‘I just want to be two hundred per cent certain of whatever I’m doing.’ Truth was, his recollection of Motti’s after-dinner briefing was coloured with a mild red wine haze – an attempt to take the edge off his nerves. In hindsight, he’d probably sanded them down to dust.

  ‘Go easy on him, Mot,’ said Patch. ‘It’s his first time.’

  ‘So I’m taking the geek’s cherry. Perfect.’ He glowered at Jonah. ‘This is just the recce. Confirming what we got, fixing what we can. Remember, I don’t like no surprises.’ He pulled out a small, sleek pair of binoculars from the rucksack, wandered over to a tall, broad tree and started to climb. ‘This’ll be our approach area. First thing we gotta do is fix the PIRs.’

  ‘Passive Infra-Red sensors,’ Jonah recalled.

  ‘Second they pick up our body heat, they’ll light up the whole of the grounds like it’s the Fourth of July. Set off the alarms too.’ He pulled himself nimbly up into the gnarled, leafy branches. ‘Photo-electric sensors tell the little beauties when it gets dark, and that’s when they kick in.’

  ‘So how do we get past them?’ Jonah called up.

  ‘Shh, man,’ Patch told him. ‘Samraj could be listening out, sunbathing the other side of the wall. Topless,’ he added dreamily.

  Jonah frowned. ‘Have you ever even seen this woman?’

  ‘She’s got boobs, don’t she?’

  ‘You sad man. She’s old enough to be your mother –’ Jonah broke off. ‘Sorry, I s’pose your mum’s not the best subject to –’

  ‘Forget it.’ Patch looked away awkwardly, his hand straying unconsciously to the leather over his missing eye and rubbing it. ‘Anyway … see, Motti’s got this laser light thing, holds a solid beam over long distance. If he can shine it right at that sensor, it won’t be able to tell when night falls. It’ll go on thinking it’s broad daylight, and it won’t kick in. We can do what we want.’

  ‘Clever,’ Jonah admitted. ‘But even if he can get a clear shot at the sensor from up there, he’d have to hold that beam so steady …’

  The high-pitched whine of a power tool started up. A few birds clattered away as Motti drilled carefully into the trunk of the solid, spreading tree. Then he took a tiny metal cylinder from between his teeth – the laser torch, Jonah guessed – and fixed it into the hole.

  Patch smiled. ‘Sneaky little bastard, ain’t he?’

  Motti scrambled casually down from the tree. ‘Should take care of that. Now, let’s go see if we can’t do something about the vibration sensors in this damn wall …’

  Patch set off after him like an obedient puppy, and Jonah followed on, the long, nerve-jangling day stretching out before him like a desert.

  It was hot and humid in Aqaba, the sun so scorching you could almost imagine its flames licking the azure sky. Tye was grateful for the air con in the hired Lexus. Stopping at lights, she took in the view. Through the shimmering heat haze she could see the mountains of Eilat looming orange and purple from across the Israeli border, and traced the red sandy desert as it gave gradual way to the blossoming colour of the Great Rift Valley. Con was spending more time eyeing the cool young Arabs hanging out in the bustling pavement cafes, dressed in Versace, smoking Marlboros, laughing and swearing in
American English.

  The Serpens Biotech offices were located on a modern industrial estate out on the coast road to Saudi. The massive concrete edifice was ugly but easy to spot with a green snake logo scaling its topmost storeys.

  ‘There’s a hotel on the estate with a good bar,’ Con reported, checking over some literature she’d picked up from a business centre. ‘Has a happy hour. Popular haunt for the workers gearing up for the weekend.’

  ‘With loose tongues,’ Tye agreed. ‘We hope.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Con, embarking on an imaginary conversation with someone, ‘can I buy you a beer? And did you notice a sinister tattooed acolyte with a couple of heavies dropping off a broken vase full of black flakes to your boss a couple of days ago?’

  ‘I wonder if Samraj is still here,’ Tye muttered. ‘Coldhardt didn’t seem to know.’

  ‘Well, if she is here, we’ll keep out of her way. And if she’s in Florence, Motti will not even wake her. Yes?’

  Tye nodded. ‘Whatever.’

  As the offices emptied of staff one by one they had no problem finding people to talk to. Some of the men gave them unwelcome hassle but there were all sorts there – Americans, Israelis, Africans, many of them bright young things lured to Serpens by the promise of cutting-edge research and good funding.

  Con coaxed conversations on gene splicing and DNA mapping and God-knew-what. Sexy stuff, Tye supposed, for these young super-brainy types. But she got the impression that the Aqaba branch of Serpens was more a starting point for the career-minded or a dead end for the career-stalled. It was all agricultural labs, plant yields and GM food testing – none of the really hot and juicy research.

  ‘This place must just have been a dropping-off point for the vase thing,’ said Tye, extricating Con from the attentions of two eager and sweaty young men. ‘Don’t you think?’

  Con nodded. ‘I think they came here because it was the nearest Serpens facility. From here, Samraj could take the flakes and fragments anywhere in the world.’

  ‘Another Middle Eastern wild goose chase,’ sighed Tye, draining her cranberry juice. ‘Total waste of time.’