The Bloodline Cipher (10 page)

‘How did you find yourself working for Blackland, Maya?' asked Jonah.

‘I was studying in Moscow, needed some work for the summer,' Maya explained. ‘Blackland and I had certain friends in common there. It was through them he asked me to catalogue his
kunstkammer
.'

Jonah raised his eyebrows. ‘Sounds rude.'

Con turned and gave him a look. ‘It's a German word, means art chamber.'

‘A collection of curiosities and wonder. That's how Blackland spoke of it. He was so enthusiastic …' Maya sighed. ‘Enthusiastic for me too, I found out. But I did not feel the same.' She shrugged, suddenly quite matter of fact. ‘After he realised that, he started to threaten me.' A haunted look crossed her eyes, and her fingers traced absently against the cut on her cheek. ‘Threatened me often.'

‘Threatened how?' asked Jonah.

‘He said he would hurt me, or maybe send me back home.' She sighed, looked down at the floor. ‘The police wish to speak to me. A tutor I was close to
disappeared, and they learned that he was a member of a secret occult group. A group for whom I had done work sometimes, translating old books on demonology and witchcraft, breaking encrypted spells and blessings …'

Con nodded. ‘So you're interested in black magic and stuff?'

A gleam stole into Maya's eyes as she smiled. ‘I love all the ritual of it. All the rules and the ceremony. The
drama
…'

‘The danger?' Jonah ventured.

‘You believe those lurid tabloid stories, the scary Hollywood films.' Maya looked disappointed. ‘The words and the rulings of the occult arts are not dangerous in themselves. As with the rulings of any belief system, it is the men who interpret them who are dangerous.' She leaned forward in the chair. ‘Compare the atrocities done in the name of organised religions through the ages with those committed in the name of dark magic. Which cause has inflicted more suffering on a global scale?'

Con got them back on-topic. ‘I take it Blackland was a member of this society too?' Maya nodded. ‘But surely, if he smuggled you into America, by sending you back he'd be incriminating himself?'

‘It would not be the police who would deal with me.' Maya looked away. ‘And since I have no living relatives, I have few places I can turn for protection.'

Suppose we can all relate to that
, thought Jonah.

‘Is my questioning completed?' Maya asked. ‘There are many things I would like to ask you …'

‘Perhaps later,' said Con, rising from the sofa with a
furtive glance to the hidden camera. ‘Or perhaps not. We shall see, yes?'

Maya looked at Jonah and smiled again. ‘I hope so.'

‘Well, Tye?' Coldhardt enquired, as Maya's image flicked off from the several screens.

I don't like the way she looks at Jonah
, was Tye's most forthright reaction. When someone was lying and feeling uncomfortable they would often turn their head or body away from their questioner, their hands and arms giving them away with stiff, self-directed gestures. But Maya was mirroring Jonah's own posture – a sign that she was interested in him.
Keep it clinical
, Tye warned herself, trying to quell her unease.
You've got nothing to worry about with Jonah, but if Coldhardt's got doubts about any of us, and I turn in a sloppy job
…

‘No alarm bells ringing here,' she said, almost reluctantly. ‘No real hesitation in Maya's replies, no overly defensive responses, nothing to suggest she's recalling what she's already said ahead of answering, plenty of eye contact …' Tye paused. There was a lot more to her human polygraph act than simply reading body language. That stuff she thought of as supporting evidence for her gut instinct; the same instinct that had kept her alive in her smuggling days. But Tye knew Coldhardt preferred opinions to be backed up with facts, so she continued with the surface stuff: ‘Maya usually glanced to her left when recalling precise detail. As a right-handed person, she'd be more likely to look to her right if she was making it up.'

Coldhardt nodded brusquely. ‘In short, then, you would say the signs add up to someone who is telling the truth?'

‘Yes,' said Tye.

‘Good,' said Coldhardt. ‘That tallies with my own observations. Nothing in Maya's behaviour so far has seemed suspicious. But for the time being she will continue to be looked after in the Chamonix safe house, away from the heart of my organisation. And I will continue my excavations into her past.' He nodded decisively. ‘They may throw light on her future.'

‘I guess with a man who's been dead thirty years back on the scene,' said Motti, ‘it's not a great time to take chances on stray girls.'

‘Like each of you in the past, she must prove herself. She and Jonah can work together on translating the Guan Yin manuscript files.'

Nice and cosy
. Tye frowned. ‘Is the safe house secure enough? I mean, if you're expecting possible trouble –'

‘Entrance to the block is secured by fingerprint and retinal scan,' Motti informed her. ‘And the windows are made with aluminium oxynitride, capable of keeping out point-fifty calibre armour piercing rounds. Each room is fitted with panic screens – vanadium steel shutters that block the doorway in response to a key phrase –'

‘It's secure,' Patch translated.

‘At all times there will be back-up for Jonah present in the safe house.' Coldhardt looked at Tye. ‘Con can remain there overnight, then the rest of you for twelve-hour shifts. Devise a rota.'

She nodded.
Starting with me
. ‘Got it.'

‘For now, you may all go and rest.'

They rose to go.

‘One last thing. The acquisition of the Guan Yin manuscript marks the starting point of a journey … a dangerous journey, no doubt, but one that may prove to be the most important of my life, and of yours.' Coldhardt looked at each of them in turn. ‘If Heidel has truly returned … if this proof of which he speaks means what I think it does …' He trailed off, eyes clouding as he stared into the darkness of the TV screens. ‘We must be strong. All of us.'

Tye swapped uneasy glances with Motti and Patch. They lingered for any more pronouncements, but Coldhardt remained silent. The hum of the strip lights, the distant rush of the air-con systems, all the background noise of the hub seemed somehow alien and amplified as they waited.

‘Class dismissed,' Motti breathed at last, and led the way over to the lift that would take them to daylight. Tye looked back at Coldhardt, their charismatic leader and mentor. Right now he seemed just another lonely old man, locked into his thoughts, mourning times past.

Jonah shut the blinds on the stunning scenery outside with a nick of nostalgia, smiling as the glow from his monitor lit the room instead of the sun. How many summer days had he spent indoors, engrossed in that digital view while the rest of the world basked in sunshine?

The safe house boasted a desktop PC with multi-core CPU. While Con amused herself with a family-sized bag of crisps and the TV, he'd tweaked the motherboard to run faster and installed a water-cooling kit to stop it overheating as a result of the increased speed. Then, as Coldhardt had requested, he'd hacked into the global network of RFID receivers.

‘What's that you're doing?'

Jonah looked up to find Maya had come in, watching the screen with interest.

‘A job for Coldhardt.'

‘Obviously.'

He kept tapping away at the keyboard. ‘This piece of code is designed to worm its way into every airport, library and high-street store that uses the RFID system. The receivers will go on functioning normally,
but in addition …' He paused. ‘In addition they'll be scanning for the transponder-tag inside the Guan Yin manuscript.'

Maya frowned. ‘Surely the manuscript was incinerated?'

‘It is just possible Heidel switched the manuscript for something else.' He looked at her. ‘Suppose there's no chance Heidel didn't know about the tags?'

‘No, he was quizzing Blackland about them when –' Maya broke off for a few moments. ‘Blackland was using a new, advanced tagging system, you see. Tiny, very powerful chips well ahead of anything on the market, carefully concealed within each book.'

‘Well, suppose we might just see what turns up.' Jonah noticed she was holding a DVD in her hand. ‘Movie?'

‘Guan Yin manuscript.' She loaded up her DVD containing the high-res scans of the ancient vellum pages. In moments, a pin-sharp image of a single page of parchment appeared on the screen. It was covered in small, neat writing in a language Jonah had never seen before. A scratchy drawing of what could have been a tree occupied one corner, with writing bunched up all around it.

Jonah looked more closely. ‘Looks like there's a lot of character repetition …' He read the file number. ‘Hey, this page is from the final quire of the manuscript, isn't it? What about the rest of the book?'

‘I always read the end of a book first,' she protested, pixie-eyes dancing. ‘Don't you?'

Jonah gave a definite shake of his head. ‘I start at the beginning.'

‘Well, I'm itching to get to the big finish. Still, if you insist …'

Jonah watched as she took the mouse and opened up another file. Her manner seemed far less formal now it was just the two of them, as if she felt able to relax a little.
That's cool
, thought Jonah.

‘This is from an early page of manuscript,' she announced. ‘Take a close look and tell me what you see …'

Jonah pushed his long fringe aside, scanned the text on the screen. ‘It's maybe a different language?'

‘Right.' She looked impressed. ‘There seem to be two distinct languages used in the book – one for most of the manuscript, the other purely for the appendix – the final twenty-five sheets of the manuscript. See, the characters are repeated more frequently, the words themselves – if they are words – seem far longer …'

‘A verbose cipher, maybe? One which substitutes several ciphertext characters for one plaintext character …' Jonah looked between the two pages on the screen with some trepidation. ‘I have to say I've never seen an alphabet like either of them before.'

‘This manuscript is one of a kind,' Maya agreed. ‘Some nineteenth-century scholars thought it might be a hoax – just a jumble of made-up letters. But the script flows very smoothly, as if the author understood what they were writing.'

‘And in any case, you said the words and characters are repeated in ways that match the patterns of natural languages.'

‘Which would be next to impossible to fake,' Maya agreed.

Jonah paused. ‘I'm enjoying this.'

Maya looked puzzled. ‘What?'

‘You know … this.' Jonah felt slightly self-conscious and began to wish he hadn't started the conversation. ‘Sparking off someone else's ideas, sharing possible approaches. Face to face, I mean,' he said quickly.

Maya smiled. ‘Yes. It is very … stimulating.'

Something about the way she said it made him blush. ‘Um …' He cleared his throat and looked firmly at the screen, trying to get back to business. ‘Have those characters been traced over?' he said. ‘Looks like two different inks have been used.'

Maya nodded, serious again. ‘The main part of the manuscript was written in tempera paint – parts have faded over the years. Certain words and symbols look darker throughout because they've been retouched – probably around the same time the appendix was added. The inks are very similar.'

‘Any idea how many years passed between the original and the retouching?'

‘Hard to say,' Maya admitted. ‘But the later characters are drawn as fluidly as the originals. It could have been the original author, coming back to his work, or at least someone who was familiar with that “alphabet”.'

‘Let's hope so. 'Cause if he traced any of the symbols wrongly …' Jonah enlarged a section where two characters in the middle of a word had been overwritten. The original ink was just barely visible beneath the darker strokes. ‘It's going to mess up any text analysis we try.'

‘Speaking of text analysis … how're you with Chinese languages?'

‘Huh?'

Maya leaned forward to enlarge part of a page, affording Jonah a glimpse down her top as she did so. He saw the edge of a tattoo peeping over the top of her black bra and found himself staring.
God, I'm turning into Patch
, he thought, looking quickly at the screen. He forced himself to focus on the weird symbol Maya had highlighted, drawn in muddy red ink.

‘These exotic symbols are the only things common to both sections of the manuscript,' she explained, apparently oblivious to any effect she'd had on him. ‘They're different to any of the characters in the body of the text, and often written in a different ink.'

‘Could be headings, or chapter titles?'

‘Or maybe signifying sections of a separate code book that can translate the pages.' She enlarged the symbol still further and looked at him, her grey gaze intent. ‘The drawing of Chinese goddess Guan Yin on the title page could be a big clue. Up until the last few hundred years, more than half of the world's literature was written in Chinese characters.'

‘Pictograms and ideograms. Symbols representing ideas or things rather than actual words.' Jonah nodded. ‘Well, I've broken hieroglyph codes before. They're usually quite logical once you get into the swing of them. What do you think this one means?'

‘It looks to me like the character
ròu
, inverted then turned upside down.' Maya drew the pictogram, which to Jonah resembled a box with most of its bottom missing and two up-pointing arrowheads
inside it. She looked at him, something unfathomable simmering in her eyes. ‘It's supposed to represent a hacked-open carcass. It means
meat
or
flesh
.' She scrolled to the bottom of the page, where a fainter symbol sat close beside a crude drawing of someone screaming. ‘And if we invert and rotate this symbol seventy degrees, it starts to look a bit like the pictogram for
ji
– meaning
temple
, or
offer sacrifice to
.'