The Bloodline Cipher (32 page)

‘They make sense of the appendix,' Maya told him. ‘Only it's not really the appendix – it's more like the
heart
… the heart of the Bloodline Cipher.'

Jonah wanted to shake her for the answers. ‘Well?'

She closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘It's more
easily demonstrated than explained. And I'm going to need my energy for what's ahead.'

Motti looked at Coldhardt. ‘Then I guess it's your turn. Care to share about you and Daddy?'

Jonah didn't for one moment believe that Coldhardt would answer. He seemed to have fallen asleep, his head angled back so his pale face caught the sun.

Con turned round in her seat to look at him. ‘Did Street and Saitou really not know that you and Heidel were … you know …'

‘Heidel was no more his name than Coldhardt is mine,' the old man said with unexpected candour, loud enough for them all to hear over the engines' diesel symphony. ‘His own father invented an identity for him from an early age … a tradition he continued. He considered our relationship a weakness, didn't want anyone thinking they could get to the father through his son. And so I became Nathaniel Coldhardt. Just another member of the team.'

‘Until you popped Poppa,' said Motti bluntly. ‘Was it like Street said?'

Coldhardt said nothing.

Maya opened her eyes for a moment. ‘Tell them,' she said, and it sounded to Jonah more an order than a suggestion.

‘Heidel told us he needed to go away on business,' Coldhardt began reluctantly. ‘To lie low for a while, he didn't know for how long. He told us we would be needed to run things in his absence. I went to see him, to say goodbye to my father one last time …' He paused. ‘And I learned – against his wishes – that he was very sick. That he was leaving to join a secret
society named Nomen Oblitum, that the entrance fee was three-fifths of his total wealth, and that in fact he might never return.'

Con had turned round in her seat, her eyes wide. ‘He hadn't told you?'

‘Perhaps it slipped his mind – along with the fact that he was selling off his team.'

Jonah stared. ‘He what?'

‘As soon as he was safely out of the way, he planned to send the signal to our purchasers to come and collect,' said Coldhardt. ‘He'd set data bombs inside the computer systems to erase all records of the business, his contacts, our bank accounts … He was planning to take everything away from us. Our freedom … my birthright …'

‘God,' Jonah muttered.

Coldhardt half smiled. ‘Oh, he'd taken God away from me many years before that.'

‘He could sell his own son?' Con shook her head. ‘You were right to shoot him.'

‘He shot me first,' said Coldhardt matter-of-factly. ‘I returned fire, caught him in the chest. Then I crawled away and passed out. When I woke again, he'd gone. But the amount of blood, the scream he'd given … I knew he had to be close to death.' Coldhardt looked at Jonah, eyes piercing, who felt a chill despite the baking sunshine. ‘Street and Saitou found me in the hub. The computers had blown. Everything was lost. I must have convinced them about Heidel's death, but before I could say much more, Street started shooting.'

‘I'm seeing a pattern here,' said Motti drily.

Coldhardt didn't react, seemingly miles away. ‘Street and Saitou thought I'd killed him simply to take everything for myself …'

‘So there was a gun fight,' said Con. ‘And you won.'

‘No one won,' said Coldhardt heavily. ‘Each of us went to ground to recover. Indeed, that was the only thing that saved us from being “collected” by those who had purchased us.'

‘Looks like Street and Saitou didn't exactly find it easy to move on,' Tye called back over her shoulder.

Coldhardt said nothing, but he glanced at Maya, an impatient look that seemed to say,
Satisfied?

‘Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it,' Maya muttered, just loud enough for Jonah to hear.

But even if you knew the truth all along, can moving on ever be easy?
Jonah reflected.
When you've tasted a life so vivid and real … when you've run so deep into the darkness but raced back with glittering treasure time and again … Whether it's taken from you or you choose to walk away – how can you ever adjust to a different life?

He thought of Patch with a note of anxiety.
It's harder still to move on when you're in a coffin
.

‘How long till we reach this island?' Jonah asked. There was an empty feeling inside him now, despite the weight of Coldhardt's secret history. As a story it had filled only a few minutes of their journey, and yet its repercussions ran on. Dozens of lives had been lost in the long aftermath of those events. And if Patch died because Coldhardt had let them blunder into a trap instead of telling them the truth sooner …

Jonah looked down at his white orchid, at the sinister mechanism peeping out from the beautiful façade. He reached past Maya and threw it overboard to be chewed up in their wake, the white scratch they were leaving in the veneer of perfect blue.

Tye took them into a white sandy bay on some insignificant speck of land; there was no jetty, but a protruding spire of rock in the shallows allowed them to moor the boat and wade ashore. All except Coldhardt, who elected to remain on board, alone with his thoughts.

A stiff breeze was blowing up, and the waves broke noisily on the shore. Jonah's insides felt like a mosh pit and his bad leg stung evilly through his wet clothes, as Maya led them to a small cave in the cliff face on the shore. ‘Not exactly BUPA, is it?'

‘The cave is cool, there is no unpleasant animal life –'

‘You dumped a dying boy in a cave.' Tye glared at Maya accusingly. ‘Why not divert to a conventional hospital?'

‘They would have undone my work,' said Maya stiffly. ‘Conventional treatments can do nothing for your friend right now.'

‘We've only got your word for that.' Motti lowered his head to speak in her ear. ‘If anything happens to Patch …'

The threat went unspoken as they entered the cool, wet half-light of the cave. A small figure lay on a stretcher, only his bloody, blackened face protruding from beneath a blanket.

‘Oh God,' Tye whispered.

Jonah clutched her hand tightly as she started to cry. He noticed that Motti had taken Con's hand too.

Within moments, Jonah caught the familiar taste of tears at the back of his throat. When Maya had told him Patch was alive, he'd allowed himself to believe things would be OK. But to see him like this – that cheery, lively, horny little bugger he'd come to know as a friend this last year, as
family
…

‘Patch?' Tye approached the body on the stretcher warily, letting go of Jonah's hand.

‘He actually looks better than he did,' Jonah murmured, his voice cracking on the last words and so fooling no one, least of all himself.

‘Of all of us … Patch is the one who deserved this least,' said Con softly.

‘Wait.' Tye turned to Maya, suddenly frantic. ‘He's not breathing.'

Maya knelt beside Patch. ‘He
is
breathing. I have put him into a deep trance, slowed down his autonomic reflexes, to divert all his energies into coping with his injuries.'

Motti wiped his running nose crossly. ‘You did all that by tapping him with your fingers?'

‘Just as Guan Yin gave her eyes to blind and wicked men to redeem them in the old stories, so the teachings of “her” manuscript open
our
eyes to our true potential. They explain how the meridians and pressure points of the body may be manipulated.' Maya smiled serenely as she pricked at Patch's ruined flesh with her fingertips. ‘But I was wrong before, Jonah – it's
not
the ultimate medical handbook. Not until
you factor in the appendix, anyway.' Her eyes were aglow. ‘That spiel about junk DNA the Scribe came out with in Chamonix, that was sheer invention … Our cells are full of chemical magic, sure, conjuring life, creating energy. And what the mages of Guan Yin's devotional cult
really
discovered was a means to master that energy within our bodies more fully than any doctor or shaman had before or since. Knowledge so powerful, so dangerous, it had to be kept the most strictly guarded secret.'

‘So they came up with the Bloodline Cipher,' said Jonah.

‘And at last, it is secret no longer.' Maya looked over at Jonah. ‘A bloodline means a group of related individuals with shared characteristics. And what's the largest group of all?' She smiled. ‘The human race. In the old stories, Guan Yin reached out to them all in their misery, ignorance and sickness in the hope she could make them whole.'

‘And the shared human characteristics are blood and veins, bones and breath and sinew,' Jonah realised suddenly, ‘just as the pictograms said.'

‘But the bloodline also refers to something far simpler in a way. Remember, this is being translated from old, old language …' Maya's grey eyes were agleam with excitement as she went on prodding and poking at Patch's skin. ‘“
The life of a creature is in the blood
,” – that's what the title page said, remember? “
Thy flesh be stitched with threads immortal
.” ' She looked at Jonah. ‘The flesh is threaded with veins. Veins like lines. Lines of blood, or …'

Jonah stared back at her. ‘Blood lines?'

‘And the blood carries energy, powers the body. The angled pen-strokes you discovered, Jonah. When arranged in the intended design they don't form a pictogram – they form a
diagram
of those lines of blood … A visual guide to manipulating key pressure points around the body in ways unheard of, in order to achieve …'

‘What?' Jonah urged her.

‘I'm trying to put it in terms you would appreciate.' Maya looked at him. ‘Just as you and I overclock our computers … so the Bloodline Cipher allows us to push human potential to the next level.'

Jonah felt the others' eyes on him, as if awaiting his reaction before deciding what they felt themselves. But he felt frozen, as if the dark chill of the cave had somehow stolen inside him. The sound of the sea outside, the warmth of the sunlight, they seemed suddenly miles away.

‘If we could increase the speed and performance of the mind and body, we could achieve higher states of understanding and physical ability, right? It's obvious.' Maya looked to be growing impatient. ‘But without a cooling mechanism, mind and body would burn out – just as an overclocked computer will burn out if its processors are not cooled.' Her eyes were shining. ‘Now, with the cracking of the cipher, we have the breakthrough.'

‘The information tells you how to “overclock” the human body to run its programmes faster?' Jonah swallowed hard. ‘So instead of ordinary, natural healing you get Healing version 2.0?'

‘If you like.'

Jonah's mind was swimming. ‘That's the maddest thing I ever heard.'

But it was followed by the sweetest, as Patch opened his cracked lips and whispered weakly: ‘While you're down there, babe, I've got a wicked itch in me balls …'

‘Patch!' Tye cried, falling to her knees beside him, reaching for his hand.

‘No,' Maya commanded. ‘You must not touch him, not yet. Balance is all. The procedure has left his energies in a fragile state.'

Jonah, Motti and Con crowded in to see Patch, to speak to him. But already his eye had closed again and he was asleep. But this time his chest was rising and falling more normally.

Con looked at Maya. ‘He will pull through, yes?'

‘His condition should stabilise shortly,' Maya agreed. ‘Then you can take him to one of
your
hospitals.' She got up abruptly. ‘There are other matters I must attend to.'

‘Why did you help us?' Con demanded.

Maya shrugged. ‘Patch was an ideal subject upon which to test a little of this newly acquired knowledge.'

‘You used him as a guinea-pig to check you'd cracked the cipher correctly?' Motti glared at her. ‘Is that it?'

‘Would you rather I had let him die?' Maya turned back to Jonah and inclined her head a little. ‘Besides, without Jonah I might not have cracked the cipher. This is his reward.'

‘Don't mention it,' Jonah murmured, watching the
steady rise and fall of Patch's chest. ‘Anyway, what d'you mean, other matters you must attend –?'

He broke off suddenly as a heavy shadow fell over the entrance to the cave. Jonah spun about, heart suddenly knocking at his throat.

Two men stood in the cave mouth, watching them. In their linen suits they looked like ordinary middle-aged businessmen – save for the large, spreading birthmarks over their chins and necks.

Maya went to stand with them. ‘Coldhardt,' she said. ‘We must attend to Coldhardt now.'

‘Wait,' said Tye, pushing her way past Jonah and Motti to challenge the strangers. ‘Where did you spring from?'

‘Our helicopter touched down nearby,' said the man to Maya's right in the same accentless English.

Tye realised now that she could hear the whirr of the rotors stealing in over the hissing rush of the waves on the sand. ‘And what do you mean, “attend” to Coldhardt?'

‘He has bought our services,' said the man simply. ‘Like his father before him.'

‘Heidel did reach us, but badly wounded,' said the other man, to Maya's left. ‘He could not be saved. And yet, now it seems we may yet save his son.'

‘Save him from what?' Con demanded.

‘From the fate that awaits him,' said Maya. ‘Heidel passed to him a genetic disorder. As he grows older, so it grows stronger … a condition that conventional medicine cannot cure.'

‘And so he turned to …
un
conventional medicine.' Jonah glanced at Tye. ‘The occult kind?'