Thieves Like Us 01 - Thieves Like Us (26 page)

She was beside him in seconds, pressing her coated finger against the black pad beside the doorframe. Jonah tried the handle and the door opened easily. Con, Motti, Patch and Coldhardt piled outside.

Jonah looked at Tye. ‘We did it. We actually
did
it!’

He could see she was trying not to smile. ‘Don’t get cocky. It’s not over yet.’

‘Get out here,’ Motti hissed, ‘and close the door.’ Tye ran to fetch the car, while Motti worked on the fingerprint panel with a tool Patch passed to him. The black pad sparked and belched a puff of black smoke.

‘That should hold them for a few minutes,’ he said.

Jonah frowned. ‘They’ll just break the windows to get after us!’

‘Bulletproof,’ said Patch, Motti and Con in unison.

They all hurried off after Tye, and Coldhardt smiled thinly at Jonah. ‘You’ll learn to recognise it yourself after a few jobs.’

‘I s’pose maybe I will,’ said Jonah.

As they reached the end of the drive, Jonah felt eyes on him from somewhere, felt he was being watched. He turned, checked out the upstairs windows. At one of them, just for a moment, he thought he glimpsed Samraj and Yianna, staring out, watching them go. But the glass was blank now, reflecting the whiteness of the sky.

Jonah’s heart was pounding as Tye brought Coldhardt’s limo to a screeching halt just outside the villa’s gates. There was still no sign of any angry guards in pursuit, but it couldn’t be long now. Con jumped into the passenger seat. Motti and Patch piled into the back of the car and Jonah scrambled after them.

‘We did it! We’re back!’ cried Patch, who looked like all his Christmases had come at once. ‘I can’t believe we’re all back together again!’

‘Me neither. But where can we go?’ Tye asked shakily, accelerating swiftly away down the private road towards the main thoroughfare.

‘Back to Siena,’ Coldhardt instructed.

‘Via McDonalds,’ called Con from the front. ‘It’s way past lunchtime and I’m starving.’

Motti’s face clouded. ‘It’s not safe to go back to the castle. Samraj knows how to get round the defences – her hoods can walk right in and take us.’

‘We need the plane, and there is information I must collect,’ said Coldhardt. ‘Samraj may not have Jonah to translate the cipher, but she knew my betraying her was always a possibility. She’ll have a
contingency plan.’

‘I’m telling you, man, her plan B will be to send her thugs round to kidnap Jonah and kill the rest of us,’ said Motti, ‘wherever we go!’

‘Oh, I imagine she’ll have something far more elaborate than a swift death in store for me. Eternal pain and damnation, perhaps.’ Coldhardt half-smiled, staring into the distance. ‘But I’d sooner face it in the next world than this one.’

‘Tell you what – why not just pucker up and kiss her ass, and maybe she’ll forgive you, huh?’ Motti slumped back in his seat. ‘And suddenly we’re expendable again.’

‘Easy, Mot,’ hissed Patch.

‘What’s up, Cyclops? Am I spoiling your game of happy families?’ He jabbed a finger at Coldhardt. ‘It’s him you should be talking to!’

‘Why
did
you keep the truth from us, Coldhardt?’ Con asked. ‘Why not just tell us you were working for them both?’

‘I didn’t want you involved,’ he said simply. ‘You people are the only things on this earth she could use against me. And she corrupts the young most persuasively. Just take a look at Yianna.’

Con’s voice softened. ‘You were afraid that if she got her hands on us she’d turn us against you?’

Coldhardt turned his gaze on Jonah. ‘Those photographs I showed of you – at your arrest, inside the police station … They were arranged by her.’

A shiver ran through him. ‘She was after me even back then?’

‘She had learned from Hela about the cultists’ use
of the lekythos, and was aware that the location of the catacombs would be encrypted on its surface. So she thought to acquire a young expert with no ties or loyalties for the day a lekythos was discovered. Someone who could be killed cleanly with no fallout once he’d done his work, so no one but her would know of the location.’

Jonah stared back at him. ‘So you knew she was after me, and got there first?’

His face remained impassive. ‘I delivered you from evil, Jonah.’

‘Right. I get it.’ Jonah nodded slowly. ‘And once I was on your team, Samraj knew the easiest way to get to me was through you.’

‘So she cosied up to you,’ Motti agreed. ‘She clued you in on all her plans.’

‘I may be an old man now, but I like to flatter myself my own charms played a part in securing her interest.’ Coldhardt half-smiled. ‘They always worked in the past.’

‘But to prove your loyalty to her now, you had to hand over Jonah,’ said Con.

‘And as I have said, I would never allow that to happen.’

‘Just how far back do you and Samraj go?’

‘I care for you all, Con,’ said Coldhardt, ‘but I answer to no one.’

He didn’t speak again for the rest of the journey.

Tye was detailed to refuel the plane and get it ready for flight, while the others helped Motti rig up some on-the-fly defences around the castle to buy them
some time in case of an attack – which they all knew could come at any moment. She heard Motti talking about trip wires, motion detectors, PIRs, bad-tempered but in his element.

Jobs done, they all met back in the junior hub, which was looking a little more like the slick sanctum of old. It was a relief to have Coldhardt back at the head of the table. Tye just hoped that Motti’s lash-ups would warn them of unexpected visitors coming to call.

The only one of them not yet in his place was Jonah. He sat instead at the computer desk, his eyes scouring the monitor screen as he factored in the remaining pieces of the cipher that Coldhardt had acquired.

‘So what do we do first?’ asked Con. ‘Sell Demnos the info on his daughter?’

Coldhardt shook his head. ‘You think he’ll pay us for news like that? He wouldn’t believe a thing without proof.’

‘So sell him the truth about Amrita, then,’ Patch suggested.

‘Tell him he’s wasted the last twenty years of his life down a blind alley – and that his daughter’s known the truth for some time?’ Coldhardt shook his head. ‘Besides, if our own role in this affair becomes known to him …’

‘Like the way you made us break into his place and not Samraj’s, for instance,’ said Motti sourly.

‘We still have Demnos’s down-payment,’ Con reminded them. ‘Enough to cut and run?’

‘Once travel and operating costs are deducted …’
Coldhardt shook his head. ‘It’s less than satisfactory. And it won’t remove the problem of Samraj.’

‘While we’ve got Jonah, we’ve got something to bargain with,’ said Con.

‘Nice to feel needed,’ Jonah called.

‘I told you, she’ll have a contingency plan,’ snapped Coldhardt. ‘I know she’s been keeping a file on a prominent professor of antiquities and languages.’

Patch looked worried. ‘Full of juicy blackmail stuff?’

‘I don’t know what she has on him. But she’ll find a way to make use of his services, depend on it.’ He smiled bleakly. ‘The moment he’s done his job, I imagine both his secrets and apparent suicide will be splashed all over the broadsheets.’

‘She won’t give up, will she?’ said Con.

Patch sighed. ‘And when she’s worked out how to make Amrita, she’ll have for ever to get us!’

‘We have different home bases, we can stay one step ahead,’ Tye argued. ‘Can’t we?’

But Coldhardt was staring into space.

‘Guys. I’ve found something.’

Everyone looked over at Jonah, Coldhardt included.

‘I’ve been tracing the code formulas, following the path the program took, processing the last parts of the cipher.’

‘There was an error?’ snapped Coldhardt.

‘No.’ Jonah shook his head, his eyes agleam. ‘But you know how I told you it hacked into those ancient language databases?’

‘As used at Oxford and Yale.’

‘Well it didn’t translate the words into English from the Ancient Greek like we thought it would,’ said Jonah slowly. ‘It translated from ninth-century
Arabic
.’

‘Arabic?’ Motti frowned. ‘But why?’

‘The lekythos was Greek – but it was found in Egypt,’ breathed Coldhardt.

Patch nodded excitedly. ‘And Ophiuchus had been known before as that Egyptian guy, what was his –?’

‘Imhotep.’ Coldhardt’s long strides devoured the distance to his desk in moments. ‘What happens if we translate the words back into Arabic?’

‘Already on the case,’ Jonah told him, standing up to allow Coldhardt to take his seat. ‘Won’t take long to get a result.’

They waited tensely.

‘Ras Alhague,’ Coldhardt read aloud, ‘Cebalrai, Yed Prior, Sabik … I’ve seen those names, I’m sure of it …’ He looked up at them, comprehension dawning. ‘Of course. Of
course
.’

‘Care to share?’ Motti drawled.

‘Stars! They’re the names of stars – in the Ophiuchus constellation!’

Tye saw Jonah frown, as though he was slowly catching hold of something in his mind.

‘Arabic astronomers had been cataloguing the stars since early times,’ Coldhardt went on. ‘Their names for the brighter stars are still often used today – Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Sirius … And they are names that would have been far more familiar a thousand years ago.’

‘So now we understand them.’ Tye shrugged. ‘But
how does that help us? Why print the names of stars on the side of the vase?’

‘And numbers,’ said Jonah. ‘Co-ordinates, Coldhardt – that was your theory, right?’

‘A possibility,’ he agreed.

‘It fits. But the question is, how do we calculate the scale?’

Tye frowned. ‘Scale of what?’

‘What’s a constellation, anyway?’ Jonah was concentrating furiously. ‘Just a pattern in the sky. A dot-to-dot with stars.’

‘And important to the cult,’ Con chipped in. ‘They marked the pattern on that warning note they left for us.’

‘Go on, Jonah,’ said Coldhardt quietly.

‘Remember the Spartan cipher that kicked all this off? “Stars buried in patterns” – that was a part of it. Those soldiers who found the catacombs must have realised it too.’

Motti’s frustration was boiling over. ‘Realised
what
?’ he demanded.

Jonah looked at Coldhardt, a grin slow-spreading over his face. ‘I think the cipher’s meant to show us how to transfer the dot-to-dot Ophiuchus pattern in the stars on to an area of land.’

Con stared at him. ‘To mark the place where the catacombs are hidden?’

‘Then the coordinates must relate to landmarks,’ said Coldhardt. ‘Things that could be seen from afar.’

‘Or even from above,’ Tye reasoned, ‘if you had to cross mountains to reach there. ’

‘But which mountains?’ said Patch. ‘What area are
we talking about?’

Jonah shrugged. ‘There’s no mention. I suppose if we were true cultists carrying the lekythos, we would
know
which country it was.’

‘Could be anywhere,’ sighed Con.

‘No. Like Yianna said, it’s somewhere the Spartan soldiers campaigned,’ Motti told her. ‘Somewhere they fought in the fourth century BC.’

Coldhardt nodded. ‘Today it’ll be part of Europe or northern Africa …’

Jonah nodded. ‘The cipher mentioned the “north”, didn’t it?’

‘That’s still a large area to track,’ said Con. ‘We must do some research, yes?’

‘We’ll start at once,’ Coldhardt announced. ‘We should be able to find evidence of Spartan military operations from that era online.’

‘And then we’ll need maps for all those areas,’ mused Patch. ‘Really good maps.’

‘There’s sat nav on the plane,’ said Tye, ‘including digital terrain models.’

‘Brilliant,’ said Jonah. ‘Can we load the software on to here, too? I’ll program in the pattern of the constellation as an overlay.’

‘It won’t be an exact aerial view,’ Coldhardt warned him. ‘It’ll be from a vantage point as Tye suggested – a mountain pass or a plateau.’

Jonah nodded. ‘With a bit of time I can scale it up or down, rotate it, skew it over each part of the map. See if it fits any features.’

‘This is gonna take for ever,’ sighed Patch. ‘Anyway, we’d need maps for, like, a thousand years ago.’

Coldhardt shook his head. ‘If these acolytes really could live for centuries at a time, they’d choose landmarks unlikely to change over hundreds, even thousands of years. But you’re right – it will take time.’ He started tapping at the keyboard. ‘So let’s start our history lesson at once, and narrow down the field.’

Motti sighed. ‘I thought we were meant to be clearing out of here?’

‘No.’ The word dropped from Coldhardt’s lips with the weight of a brick. ‘There’s no time to waste. And besides, Samraj will be expecting us to cut and run – it’s the obvious move.’

‘That’s ’cause it makes sense.’

‘Not when she may know the whereabouts of our other bases in Switzerland, Mexico, southern France …’ He nodded gravely. ‘She could be dispatching her guards to any one of those places in readiness for our arrival.’

Motti sighed impatiently. ‘Well, if nothing else, she’s bound to have this place under observation.’

‘A fair assumption,’ Coldhardt agreed. ‘Let us leave the gates ajar, just as they were. And we must black out all the windows. None of you will use your rooms – you will restrict your movements to the hub and the hangout as much as possible.’

‘What will you do once we’ve found the catacombs’ location?’ wondered Con. ‘Sell it to Demnos? Let him fight over it with Samraj and lie low somewhere till the heat’s died down?’

Coldhardt shook his head. ‘We must get to the catacombs ourselves, before she does.’

‘Why?’ challenged Motti. ‘So you can get one up on your ex? So you can get the secret of everlasting life all for yourself?’

‘So
we
can acquire ourselves a great deal of money.’ He looked at Motti coldly. ‘This venture is about maximising profit now, nothing more. If those catacombs really are the place where Ophiuchus chose to bury himself alive, imagine what relics and rarities may be hidden inside – quite aside from the unique properties of this “flesh of the gods”.’ He smiled, a true rogue’s smile. ‘And since Samraj seems to be on the warpath, a haul like that should buy us a good deal of protection from collectors all over the world.’