Thieves Like Us 01 - Thieves Like Us (27 page)

‘We could give her the best of it to get her off our backs,’ Patch suggested.

‘
Give
it to her?’ Con was offended. ‘Offer her a discount, maybe.’

‘First we have to actually find the catacombs,’ said Jonah.

Coldhardt nodded decisively. ‘So let’s do it.’

Jonah woke blearily to the sound of distant engines and the sharp patter of gunfire. He scrambled up from the soft couch he lay on, wide-eyed, disorientated. The hangout was dark. Motti’s quiet breathing carried from a large beanbag beside the bar. Then Jonah noticed a pale blue glow was coming from one of the side rooms.

‘Come on! Yes, yes … Come to Papa …
Gotcha
!’

It was Patch’s voice. Rubbing his gritty eyes, Jonah padded through and found him sitting in a big squashy armchair in front of a huge plasma TV, playing computer games.

‘You scared the hell out of me,’ Jonah complained. ‘Shouldn’t you be sleeping?’

‘Sorry mate,’ said Patch, hitting the pause. ‘Only, I’ve never finished this game, see? And, well, after what’s been kicking off around here …’

‘You think you might never get the chance?’

Patch shrugged and hit the pause again, let the room fill with the sound of engines, screaming and flying bullets. ‘Anyway, it helps take my mind off what’s really bugging me.’

‘Which is?’

‘The prospect of a sudden, violent death is bad enough – but dying a virgin? That really stinks!’ He blew up a couple of out of control tankers speeding towards him. ‘Hey, since I helped save Con’s life, d’you think if I asked her extra-nicely –?’

‘I wouldn’t bother,’ Jonah advised. ‘Not unless you want that joystick inserted somewhere unpleasant.’ He sighed and yawned, and then his watch alarm went off. ‘Three-thirty am. Con should be coming off shift. I’d better go and relieve her.’

‘It’s not fair,’ Patch grumbled, blowing up a munitions dump. ‘She should be the one relieving me!’

Jonah smiled through another yawn and set off for the hub. After all he’d been through lately, he felt he could sleep for a year – and a trawl through about a million aerial views and cross-sections of European landscapes was no kind of substitute. He and the others were working in rotas, four hours on, four hours off. All except Coldhardt, who kept ploughing on through the possible locations. He didn’t seem to need sleep, his eyes clear and strong regardless of the time of day.

The night outside was quiet and still. Jonah hurried through it, keeping close to the perimeter wall of the main building. Motti had spent more time improving the castle’s defences than on the actual task in hand, but no one was complaining. More than thirty-six hours had passed since they’d started the search for the catacombs, and they were all becoming convinced that an attack from Samraj’s guards sometime soon was inevitable.

One good thing: the threat was a powerful spur to
getting a result, and fast.

Suddenly, Jonah caught movement up ahead. He flattened himself against the wall.

‘It is only me.’ Con’s voice.

Jonah breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I was just coming to replace you.’

She crossed quickly to him, a tired smile on her face. ‘You think I can be replaced?’

‘Er – no! I didn’t mean …’ He cleared his throat. ‘So. How’re things?’

‘I have a pain in my guts if you really want to know,’ she told him, grimacing. ‘Ever since we left Samraj’s place.’

‘Were you hurt in the fight?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s probably just junk food withdrawal symptoms. Get me some chicken nuggets and I’ll be fine.’

She started to move past him, but on impulse he blocked her way. ‘Er, Con … I’ve been meaning to say. What happened in my room the night I left –’

‘It was nothing,’ she said briskly. ‘I thought I was saying goodbye.’

‘So did I,’ he said.

She just smiled. ‘Then we forget it, yes?’

Jonah nodded, though it wasn’t the kind of kiss you could ever forget. As she pushed past him with a quick pat on the shoulder, he knew that was all it had been – just a brilliant snog from out of the blue. And he felt kind of weird, because if he’d ever pictured himself snogging anyone round here, it would be Tye …

Oops!

Sleep deprivation gave you funny thoughts. He only
hoped it didn’t make you hallucinate too.

A few minutes later, as he neared the hub, he heard Tye whoop for joy. He rushed inside.

There she was with Coldhardt, poring over some printouts. She looked up at him, a huge grin stretching over her face.

‘Cracked it,’ she said.

‘So this is Macedonia,’ murmured Jonah.

Barely six hours on, and he was sitting with Tye in the cockpit of the plane staring out over the rugged, mountainous terrain. Viewed from this height, the landscape took on a slightly unreal quality: the glittering grey of glacial lakes, the dramatic drop of the basins and valleys … Like all of this was some weird kind of dream.

And yet he knew that, for better or worse, nothing in his life had ever seemed more vivid than his time with Coldhardt.

After so long spent dreaming about life, Jonah felt the time had come to start living it for real.

‘We’re flying over the
Plakenska Planina
,’ Tye informed him, checking her sat nav. ‘That’s the vantage point, right?’

‘It’s the most likely mountain pass that the faithful acolytes would have travelled, yeah,’ he agreed. ‘If we’ve got it right.’ There were no guarantees. The Macedonian landscape was riddled with waterfalls, lakes, peaks and ravines and –

‘
Poljes
,’ Jonah announced, pointing down at what looked like a couple of enormous animal footprints in the broad sweep of land. ‘I read about them online.
Water dissolves the limestone and it kind of falls away, see, leaving these depressions in the land, several miles across …’

‘You’re
such
a geek, Jonah.’

‘Who died and made you Motti?’

‘I just hope that after working for two days straight, we’re not on the mother of all wild goose chases.’ Tye yawned noisily. ‘Then I’ll
really
show you a depression miles across.’

‘It’s tough on you,’ he said, ‘having to fly on top of everything else.’

‘Want to take over?’

‘Nah. Don’t want to crash your party. Or the plane, for that matter.’

She shook her head with exaggerated weariness. ‘Look, this lake below is one of the points on our do-it-yourself constellation, right?’

Jonah felt a snap of disappointment as she nudged the conversation back to business. He was probably boring her. And yet he couldn’t help feeling that maybe there
was
some small connection there, despite the gulf between their backgrounds …

Get you!
came the familiar nagging voice in his head.
Projecting all this emotional crap on to Tye, just because she’s the only person who’s ever come after you, the only person who’s wanted you back in her life. But she was only using you to get back her friends
.

Look at her. How could someone like that be interested in someone like you?

‘Uh, Jonah?’ Tye asked again, looking up at him again with those incredible eyes. ‘The lake?’

Go jump in it
, Jonah told his nagging voice. It wasn’t like he really felt anything more for Tye than friendship.

That would be crazy.

‘Moving swiftly on,’ he muttered. ‘OK, let’s see now … That’s Lake Prespa, yeah? That’s our point for
Marlick
, the elbow. Which makes that waterfall …’

‘Which waterfall?’

‘That waterfall, next to the bigger one further back,’ he pointed. ‘That must be
Yed Posterior
.’

‘Hey, geek!’ Motti yawned noisily, called from the cabin: ‘You talking about posteriors in there?’

‘Ha, ha!’ said Jonah. ‘
Yed Posterior
. It means “hand after”.’

‘Hey, Tye, you got a geek’s hand after your posterior!’ Motti called, and Patch sniggered beside him.

‘Just get ready for your jump,’ Tye yelled back at him.

Up ahead was a distinctive red-black boulder, like a giant’s marble fallen from the sky and come to rest against some rocky foothills.

If they’d gambled right and this really was the place, then that boulder would represent the brightest star of the constellation: Ophiuchus Alpha, also known as
Ras Alhague
.

The head of the snake. The point of the pattern most easily accessible from land.

And maybe – just maybe – the entrance to a hidden underworld, which contained the secret of eternal life.

Motti was calmly slipping on a bulky coat and a parachute harness, getting ready to jump. Jonah
watched the muscles in Tye’s smooth, slender arms tense and contract as she pulled up on the stick and the plane began to descend.

With Motti dropped on target to scout the land, Tye set the plane down at a small industrial airport about forty miles away, a range of grey buildings like a poor imitation of the mountains spanning the skyline. Con worked a little magic with the airport officials; it might have been her fluent Greek or some mild mesmerism, but they accepted the group’s bogus business credentials and even arranged a hire car with which to explore the outlying district.

Tye supposed they were going a little further than the officials might imagine. Con sat beside her in the 4×4, Jonah, Coldhardt and Patch in the back, as she rattled them over the rough terrain, up perilous tracks and down into ravines. Coldhardt had worked out a route that ought to be drivable, and Tye took it slowly. A punctured tyre, broken axle or sheared cable now could set them back hours – or even finish their journey for good.

‘Doesn’t look like anyone’s travelled this way before us, anyway,’ Jonah observed.

‘So our own tracks will stand out a mile,’ said Con.

‘We should have stolen quite a march on Samraj,’ said Coldhardt. ‘It’s a chance we’ll have to take.’

No one spoke much as the tension slowly grew with the passing miles. Patch was looking green and clutching his stomach, his Game Boy Advance out of batteries. Con was sitting in the passenger seat hugging her knees and studying the map intently. She
seemed to be having some tummy problems herself.

Only Coldhardt looked serene, both eyes closed, mindless of the jolts and scrapes and the grinding of protesting gears.

It took hours, but they finally reached their chosen rock by late afternoon. Tye untangled her aching fingers from the wheel and slumped back in her seat, accepting the thanks and praise of the others without comment.

‘From here it’s a hike on foot down into the gully,’ Coldhardt announced.

She felt Jonah’s hand press down lightly on her shoulder for a moment as he led the exodus from the jeep. The muscles there felt like they’d locked together with the long tension.

‘Could you use a quick massage, sweets?’ Con asked her.

‘Thanks.’ Tye looked fleetingly at Jonah. He was staring out at the sky, a darkening blue now as it made its first overtures to the night.

‘It’s OK,’ Con said quietly as her hands kneaded Tye’s bruised and aching muscles. ‘I won’t be offended if you’d rather ask him.’

Caught off-guard, Tye opened her mouth to make some retort – and found she couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘Hey!’ Motti’s voice carried distantly through the wilderness, instantly electrifying the silence. ‘Come down here, quick!’

Con and Tye both jumped from the jeep and followed the others to the lip of the gully. Motti was the size of a termite far below, waving his arms in what
seemed to be a mixture of welcome and warning.

What had he discovered?

Jonah watched Coldhardt as he led the way down to meet Motti, scrambling down the crumbling incline with a speed that belied his years. He supposed that adrenalin, a desire for revenge, and basic, dirty greed could come together to make quite an energy boost. Certainly they helped him make it safely down to the marshy plateau at the base of the gully.

Coldhardt was breathing hard, his handsome features florid with exertion. But Jonah noticed that while a few anxious looks were passed, no one asked if he was all right. No one wanted to provoke his temper.

Besides, what the hell were they going to do if he wasn’t?

‘You guys sure took your time,’ said Motti tetchily.

Jonah shrugged. ‘Didn’t want to rush the expert at his work, did we?’

‘Motti,’ Coldhardt wheezed, ‘what have you found?’

‘I think I’ve sussed out an entrance,’ he said, losing some of his dour demeanour in his excitement. ‘About fifteen metres from the boulder, built into the base of those foothills. It’s just a crack, and it’s real silted up, but I reckon it’s our way in. Maybe there’s some kind of pulley mechanism behind it.’

Patch looked suddenly alarmed. ‘Like the old crypt we did over in Lima?’

Motti nodded. ‘So long as we can find the trigger mechanism, and if it’s still working after all this time –’

‘Please God, no swords this time,’ Patch muttered.

‘You must study the door for yourself,’ Coldhardt told him. ‘You are familiar with many of the ancient tricks of the trade.’

‘Well, on paper, yeah, but –’

‘C’mon, Cyclops,’ said Motti, wrapping an arm round his shoulders. ‘You know what they say – you ain’t worth the room till you crack your first tomb.’

Patch allowed himself to be led away with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man going to the gallows.

Jonah frowned. ‘There’ll really be locks and alarms and stuff on some old catacombs?’

Coldhardt gave a ragged cough. ‘People have found many ways to protect their property through the ages, Jonah.’

‘What, the Indiana Jones stuff? Big stone ball tumbling through the tunnel? Hundreds of spears in the wall?’

‘On the whole, their precautions are a lot less spectacular but a whole lot nastier.’ He stretched and padded away, kicking his legs as if to shake the cramp out of them. Jonah watched him go, felt an unsettled feeling gathering like a cloud in the back of his mind.

‘Are you superstitious, Jonah?’ Tye asked.

‘Motti asked me that on my first night.’ He shook his head. ‘No. I’m not.’

‘Patch never used to be,’ said Con brightly, ‘until the crypt job. Now he sleeps with the lights on, did you –?’