The Code War (34 page)

Nancy played with the sugar
packets in the bowl. Hong Kong was halfway around the world. She
didn't know anyone there. It was crazy to believe she was going to
a remote part of Asia - was Hong Kong in China or Japan? Or
somewhere else? - and build a new life in a very dodgy company. How
was that going to end well?

The sugar packets she stacked on
top of each other fell over. What had she ever achieved in her life
to make her think she could succeed in a dog eat dog world? She
sighed. It was time to end the dream
.
Time to go back to being Nancy the small-time travel agent who'd
made a big mistake with three stupid boys in Israel and a stupid
trip to Africa and wouldn't do it again. She'd finish her holiday
and then go back to Ealing and carry on where she'd left off. That
was it.

'Shai was right,' she said out loud.
'I'm in over my head. I'd better jump out of this whirlpool before
I drown.'

She breathed a sigh of relief,
stood up and pulled her
handbag over her
shoulder. Her beach shoes hardly made a sound as she waved her hand
to the café owner and walked to the glass door. No-one else in the
café paid her the slightest attention. She was just an
insignificant little girl who nobody would miss when she'd
gone.

A large capital S with Chinese dragons'
heads at the beginning and end of its serpentine shape was clearly
visible hanging in space several inches the other side of the
glass. The body of the S glistened with scales like armour and it
writhed with energy and power. The protruding eyes were penetrating
and alive, awash with pools and swirls. In their watery depths
Nancy saw promises of mysteries and mazes, of love and lanterns, of
emperors and escapades. She pulled open the door, closed it again
and saw the S slowly fade, the eyes last to disappear.

Nancy set off back to the
apartment to pack. Her eyes were bright and her pace was brisk. She
was wondering how she would explain to the boys that she was
leaving Israel the next day.

Inferno

'This is my favourite place in all
of Hades,' announced Bezejel in delight to Hideki and
Kodrob.

As though they couldn't tell.

Bezejel
had led them up the spiral stairway around the lower
reaches of Husk Tower. Now she fairly sparkled in the reflected
glow of all the orange and red hues that threw themselves over the
yellow tower. She breathed in deeply. 'Smell that sulphur. Doesn't
it fire up all the senses in your body and load you with lust?
Doesn't it give you a thrill to kill and a desire to
survive?'

Hideki, as ever, ignored her. Kodrob
felt obliged to look at Bezejel and nod, albeit without much
passion in his features.

'I've brought you both here today
because I want to remind you of what Hell is about. What we stand
for.' Bezejel was determined to display the power of her reason.
The reason of the fanatic. 'Look out there and understand why
Inferno is right and why our philosophy will succeed in the long
term.'

She stopped them at a point on the
helter skelter where the vast finger of Slothmire lay stretched out
into the distance. The land surface of the finger was barely
visible. The entire plain heaved with a groaning mass of devilry,
standing, stooping and crawling. Here and there a fight broke out
over some tiny sod of shale or piece of coal. Dozens of lower caste
trolls, mawls and pixies joined each deadly scrum, desperate to
steal any trophy that would allow them to feel greater, richer,
better than all the others - even if just for an
instant.

Further out still, near the end of
the finger was a vast wall of slag and stone that stretched from
one coast to the other. On the other side of this, the 'nail' of
the finger, was where the vast majority of gurns eked out their
miserable existences. Destitute and starving, they defended their
territory with the force of their numbers, lest they all be
captured and burnt in a short time.

'They're all my people,'
proclaimed Bezejel proudly, indicating the mobs below. 'The strong
survive and the weak die out. We are gradually creating a powerful
tribe. Eventually the weak will be gone and we will face Heaven and
all its cosy, pampered angels on the battlefield and we will thrash
them.'

The lower levels of Husk Tower were open
to upper caste demons both for motivational sightseeing and for
Destructive Purpose meetings. From the helter skelter stairway,
corridors led off into the interior of the building. Some of the
rooms were for private debauchery. Others were dungeons where the
Leader could interrogate any presumed malcontent who might lead an
insurrection against him. Few were ever found to be innocent. Most
were condemned. It wasn't called Husk Tower for nothing.

Bezejel led them on till they
reached a plateau in the spiral. Here the helical wall jutted out,
overhanging the fall below. The incline had been levelled out to
make an even deck. Bezejel had arranged for their meeting to be
held here. A stone table and three chairs were set out on the small
plateau. She motioned her accomplices to sit.

'Let's talk,' she said. 'Let's make our
plans while we look out on the cauldron below where the glorious
future of Inferno is being pieced together right now.'

Hideki sat and looked over the wall at
the huddled masses below. He betrayed no thought or emotion. His
habitual arrogance was his only expression.

Bezejel regarded him with annoyance. It
was time to talk business.

'What was in those eyes, Hideki, the
eyes of the Chinese lizard?' she demanded.

'Nothing, Madam Bezejel.'

'But Nancy stared into them.
S
he saw something there. You must have
planted something. Tiny images, maybe. Inside those reptilian
windows. What were they?'

Hideki looked away disdainfully,
determined not to be hurried.

Kodrob was feeling the intense
heat that surged upwards from the plains. The thermal currents were
attracted to the Tower and rose around it as if they were following
the spiral stairway. It was too warm for Kodrob, though Bezejel and
Hideki appeared comfortable. He carefully brushed his forehead and
looked down with a frown at the slight dash of perspiration on his
fingers. Sweat was a sign of weakness. Only new arrivals to Inferno
displayed such intolerance for heat and they were roundly mocked
and abused. Kodrob was sitting slightly behind his terrifying
mistress. He shuffled his chair, taking the opportunity to wipe his
hands on the underside of the seat.

Pu Gash emerged unexpectedly from
a door in the Tower beside them and walked onto the deck. Bezejel
had planned ahead and arranged for the little imp to wait on them.
He had been making drinks in a nearby 'petrol station' and now
appeared bearing three flaming flagons of tar on a tray. He handed
them to each of his three superiors in turn. Their bitter aroma and
black smoke perfectly represented the malice of their little
maker.

For
Pu
Gash was not a kindly imp. In honour of the indentured
slave-children that Nancy had helped on their journey to cocoa bean
farms south of Gambia, Pu Gash had carefully decorated the outsides
of the flagons with motifs of young children being prised away from
feckless parents. The images of their flailing hands and wide-eyed
fear at their separation were a welcome sight to the demons. Hell
valued orphan societies as some of its best recruitment grounds.
Kodrob shook Pu Gash's little hand. Bezejel patted him on the head.
Hideki ignored him.

Bezejel held up her flagon and
inspected the images before nodding approvingly. 'There's a special
place in hell for all of these young ones. The more they despise
their fathers for selling them to people traffickers the more
they'll understand that survival is only for the
ruthless.'

She
stood and removed her coat, smoothing down her skin-tight
red dress several times with her elegant fingers. She regained her
seat and crossed her legs.

'She saw what she wanted to see',
Hideki eventually pronounced. 'The eyes of the dragon only opened
her imagination. They created an empty space in Nancy's mind. She
filled that space with her own desires. We will never know what she
saw. We only opened the door.'

'It was superb work, Hideki.
I
t was exactly what I wanted from you,'
exclaimed Bezejel. 'But now it is essential that you tell me more
about the code. How long will it be until Nancy has received the
entire coded message and we can extract all of Mya Ling's ambition
and ruthlessness forward into her soul?'

Hideki spoke carefully and
deliberately. 'In Earth time, we go more slowly now. Nancy will
enter a new world in Hong Kong and must be given time to settle
into it. But it is permitted now to tell you how many code letters
in whole code string.'

Kodrob looked up and regarded
Hideki with more than usual attentiveness. He noticed that Bezejel
had stopped fidgeting and burning sugar in the flames of her
drink.

Hideki drew himself up and looked
languidly over the wall at Slothmire. He was too important to
actually look anyone else in the eye,
thought Kodrob. The rivalry between Bezejel and Hideki was
flaring up again, Hideki's arrogance continuing to scrape against
Bezejel's raw temper.

Kodrob realised that he was
beginning to tire of the constant
turbulence around him. Why couldn't he just retire
somewhere quiet and let his fellow demons fight it out between
themselves until there were none of them left? He realised that
these were dangerous thoughts. If any of his squad realised he was
thinking with such passivity he would be demoted in an instant and
he knew what that would lead to. A gang assault with no mercy. In
really severe cases it could lead to double-husking and he would
re-emerge as a mere troll, fit only to clean latrines with his bare
hands and lick splashes of petrol from the floor with his
tongue.

He realised Hideki was looking at him
and there was contempt in his eyes.

'Are
you
with us, Captain Kodrob, or are you thinking about your next visit
to a squawhouse?' said Hideki acidly. 'We don't want to hold you up
if you'd prefer to be somewhere else.'

Bezejel turned around and glared at
Kodrob. For now he was her protégé and what he did reflected on
her. Kodrob couldn't afford to lose her patronage.

'I'm delighted that you trust us
with this important information, Colonel Hideki,' said Kodrob,
recovering quickly. 'I was just reflecting on the gallant work you
have done and how it has paid off.'

Hideki gave him a sour look.
Bezejel kept up the pressure. 'Colonel Hideki, you were talking
about the code.'

'Indeed
,' continued Hideki trying to recover his air of
superiority and looking coolly at Bezejel. 'I believe it will help
the cause of our mission if you know that there are nine letters in
the code.' He looked at them to gauge the effect of what he clearly
considered to be a hugely important piece of information. 'We must
deliver all nine before we can connect Nancy to her ancestor. So
far we have delivered four and if I may say so, the last one was
the most sophisticated and the most important. As you correctly
perceived, Bezejel, the eyes of the dragon, which I designed
myself, had a most profound effect on the young woman.'

'Indeed Hideki, I witnessed it myself,'
retorted Bezejel. 'But it would not have been possible to deliver
the code letter safely without my team members in place. We did all
the hard work.'

'I see
,'
replied Hideki non-committally. 'But what are your team doing about
the messages from the winged imperialists? There was another triple
digit number from them in the harbour. And what about her visit to
the relative in the kibbutz? What are you doing to stop them,
Bezejel?'

Bezejel was defiant.
'Her great uncle encouraged her to continue on
the path we have set out for her. That may not have been his
intention. But it was the result. I am well pleased with that
meeting. We were right to let it go ahead.'

'But Nancy is now searching for
her roots,' countered Hideki. 'She is a Jew. What if she
rediscovers her Jewish roots?'

But Bezejel was ready for this.
'Calm down Hideki. You worry too much. She has no family in Hong
Kong. There are few of her faith in
the
British imperialists' colony. Not a single synagogue. In Hong Kong
she will be completely isolated. It is the perfect place to deliver
the rest of the code to her. Paradise will be powerless to
intervene.' Bezejel now had Hideki's full attention and she paused
for a moment before delivering her knockout punch.

'There is no place on Earth where
Nancy is less likely to find her roots.'

Heaven's
Shore

'I've received permission to go to
Earth,' announced Jabez proudly. 'That is, really go there, not
just watch from above.'

'You mean, like, walk on the
ground and drink tea?' asked Agatha.

The four angels were at Jabez's lonely
command post, three of them by globe.

'Yes, I'll be drinking tea definitely.
But it'll be Chinese tea.'

'That's great news,' shouted Luke. So
you're going to Hong Kong?'

'Yes, my sponsors were impressed
that we made the right call in anticipating the Hong Kong
connection. They also approve our strategy to work with the friend
that Agatha identified. But there's more.' Jabez was clearly
excited. 'First, I'm going to familiarise myself with things on the
ground, understand the local conditions. But later, if all goes
well, I may need some or all of you to join me. It's voluntary of
course. There are dangers. But I think it could really help us to
support Nancy better when the time comes. What do you all
think?'