Thieves Like Us 01 - Thieves Like Us Read online

  The street was just as quiet. Jonah walked quickly along the uneven pavement, past the cars that lined the street bumper to bumper, towards the looming layer cake of the tower. Its solid presence, its gravity-defying tilt had proved a strange comfort to him yesterday; he’d sat on the grass in the Field of Miracles and hoped for one himself.

  He glanced behind him, unable to shake a feeling of unease – and glimpsed movement. Early-bird tourists, he told himself, having a good poke about the back streets before the place started filling up. But he quickened his pace nonetheless. He’d seen a police car near the tower yesterday in the shadow of the Duomo; obviously he wasn’t about to go to the law for help but the sight of police might deter anyone from –

  Another scuffling noise behind him. He turned, caught a further flash of movement – someone ducking behind a nearby car. Jonah backed away nervously, getting ready to run. Then someone slapped a hand down on his shoulder. He spun round, brought up his fists.

  And Tye slapped them back down.

  ‘Glad we taught you to be paranoid,’ she said. She looked tired. Her eyes were bloodshot and a little puffy. ‘If you’d still been in bed after that call I’d be disappointed.’

  Jonah stared, a slow smile spreading over his face. He guessed he should be angry but he was too pleased to see her. ‘What’s going on? How’d you find me?’

  ‘I knew where you’d been dropped. Guessed you’d have to hand in your fake passport to get a hotel room. So I’ve spent half the night calling every single hotel within thirty miles of Pontedera, asking for Johann Sypher till I got lucky.’

  ‘And if I’d travelled more than thirty miles?’

  ‘I would have gone to fifty.’ She glared at him. ‘And beaten the crap out of you when I finally tracked you down.’

  ‘Lucky I’m lazy then. Did you fly here?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I take it you didn’t come all this way just to say goodbye?’

  She shook her head. ‘Afraid you don’t get off the hook that easy, Jonah Wish.’

  ‘That’s right. We need you, mate.’

  Jonah turned to find Patch standing just behind him. He looked terrible, his pale, angular face bloodied and bruised.

  ‘What you need is a doctor,’ Jonah told him. ‘What the hell’s happened? Where are the others? Are they OK?’

  Tye tilted her head back, watched him warily. ‘You mean you actually care?’

  ‘I …’ Suddenly seeing them like this, he realised in a second what he’d agonised over for hours yesterday. ‘Well, yeah. I s’pose I do.’

  ‘Good. ’Cause if you didn’t, Patch was gonna have to spike your breakfast so we could smuggle you back to Siena in your sleep.’ Tye’s tiny smile did nothing to allay his growing concerns that something was seriously wrong. ‘And we don’t have time for you to waste sleeping.’

  ‘You’re now officially the brains of the outfit,’ Patch added.

  ‘I’m what?’

  ‘Motti and Con were caught on Serpens property. Coldhardt’s disappeared. The castle’s been trashed.’ Tye shrugged. ‘I know you quit, but like Patch said – if we’re gonna get them back, we need you. We need you, Jonah.’

  ‘Me?’ For what felt like an age, Jonah could only stare at her. ‘But … but you know what happened before. I’ll let you down. I’m bound to.’

  She looked at him. ‘You going to let that stop you trying?’

  He held her gaze until the long seconds of shock and shadow had passed.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I will try.’

  Patch put a grateful hand on his back. Tye smiled.

  There was no need for more words as they hurried on their way.

  Motti listened to Samraj go on with a mounting sense of unease. She was giving away all the big secrets. This could not be a good thing. She was doing what every supervillain in every comic book had done for decades – explaining the details of her diabolical plan so they could die knowing how clever she was. Any second now the speech balloon would burst from the crimson slash of her lips: But now you know too much! Prepare to die …

  Except he knew that none of this was for his or Con’s benefit. Samraj was speaking solely to Coldhardt. It was like she was making some big pitch to him, wanting him to understand where she was coming from – and where she wanted to go.

  But Coldhardt had some trick up his sleeve. That was what Motti was desperate to believe: the chief was only pretending to listen, playing Samraj along while he dreamed up a way to get them out of here to safety. But from his look of rapt attention he was genuinely enthralled.

  Con, on the other hand, still looked genuinely out of it, slumped on the uncomfortable couch, breathing fast and shallow. She moaned suddenly.

  Samraj turned, but the flash of irritation soon left her face. ‘The poor child is truly suffering, isn’t she?’

  Motti scowled. ‘Like you care.’

  ‘I am not quite the monster you think me.’ Samraj turned to Yianna. ‘Find Hela. Have her make up some of the cult’s healing draught. It will help to settle the girl.’

  Yianna looked quite affronted for a moment. Then she nodded, and hobbled from the room.

  ‘Thank you, Samraj,’ said Coldhardt quietly.

  ‘The root of the snake,’ she said, abruptly returning to her tale. ‘It is mentioned in the scraps of manuscript in my possession, and when Yianna told me it was written in her father’s ancient papers, I knew it must be of great importance.’

  ‘I thought the snake stuff was just metaphors,’ said Motti.

  ‘And so it is.’ She didn’t spare him so much as a glance. ‘According to Hela, over the long centuries Ophiuchus grew weary of keeping the balance within his body. Bored with his endless existence, finding only emptiness in his meditations, he sought to stimulate the Amrita through other means. He craved more extreme experiences.’

  ‘Bummer they didn’t have snowboards back then, huh?’

  ‘Be quiet, Motti,’ said Coldhardt, his hushed voice still somehow filling the room.

  Samraj continued. ‘He heard of cave drawings in the Sahara desert – images that were old when even he was young, predating the Stone Age. They showed strange gods festooned with mushrooms, men harvesting the fungus, offering it up in ecstasy.’

  ‘The use of hallucinogenic mushroom rites is as old as humanity,’ Coldhardt agreed. ‘Many cultures and religions use them still to contact “spirits” – or what their addled minds perceive to be spirits.’

  ‘So you see, the “root of the snake” has nothing to do with reptiles,’ Samraj went on. ‘According to the cult of Ophiuchus, snake-root is the ancient name for a rare fungus that thrived only deep underground – also known as “flesh of the gods”. Ophiuchus and his followers located the source and partook of it. They expanded their consciousness, explored the higher realms of reality.’

  ‘So the big god-guy tripped out on some magic mushrooms?’ Motti snorted. ‘Wow, that really is extreme.’

  Coldhardt stopped him with a single warning look. ‘The black, organic detritus in the funeral vase …it was the remains of this fungus?’

  Samraj nodded. ‘Sadly it was so desiccated it was barely viable for study – even with all the specialist technology at my disposal.’

  ‘That’s why the lekythos stayed at the Serpens lab in Aqaba for twenty-four hours,’ Motti realised. ‘It’s agriculture-based – all your plant specialists are there. You already knew there was fungus in that urn, right?’

  ‘I knew that Ophiuchus’s followers transported great treasure in special funeral vases. But only the cultists could tell me the whole story.’ The gloating smile on her face faded. ‘It seems Ophiuchus grew obsessed with the snake-root and the higher realities it unlocked for him. He and his most trusted acolytes hewed acres of dank, secret catacombs in which to farm the snake-root. And then the petty, ignorant people who had venerated him for so long turned on him. It was claimed that he and his followers were swayed from the true path of balance and f
ell into physical and spiritual decay. That Ophiuchus, his mind and body ruined with madness, finally entombed himself in those catacombs, together with enough flesh of the gods to sustain him for all time.’

  ‘Yum,’ Motti muttered.

  ‘Popular opinion turned against Ophiuchus. His image was struck from the zodiac. History was rewritten to remove much of his influence. His cult of followers was driven underground.’ Samraj sneered in disgust. ‘This is the supposed great evil now associated with his name! Superstitious, disapproving guff about his greed for knowledge undoing the state of perfect bliss. All lies!’

  Coldhardt looked at her expectantly. ‘And the truth is …?’

  ‘I know your naivety is a front, Nathaniel. It was the men of power who rubbished Ophiuchus and his achievements. It suited them that the people obey their gods, not find ones of their own. They knew that if the snake-root became widely used, they could lose control of the population.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Throughout history there have been so many fools who would turn their backs on knowledge because of the risks it might bring. Fools who dare not act for fear of upsetting the status quo.’

  Motti looked at her doubtfully. ‘So you don’t think this fungus stuff was bad news.’

  ‘I believe the matter should be carefully studied,’ she answered. ‘If it’s true that Ophiuchus fell into physical decline and yet remained immortal, then perhaps the snake-root acted as a kind of catalyst for the Amrita, allowing it to refresh a polluted body.’

  ‘Which is why you had that detritus forwarded to your facilities here in Rome,’ breathed Coldhardt. ‘Just in case it could help your cultists.’

  ‘It can’t,’ she said simply. ‘They need a fresh source.’

  The door opened and Yianna came back inside with Hela, the black-clad acolyte hiding behind her veil. Motti had only glimpsed her in Cairo, but as she moved across the room, holding a pewter goblet in both hands, he could see how lithe and graceful she was. The skin around her eyes, though, was tinged grey, almost translucent. Motti’s own skin began to crawl.

  ‘Hey, what’s in that stuff?’ he asked Hela as she set the cup to Con’s lips.

  ‘She cannot understand you,’ said Yianna. ‘She speaks no English.’

  ‘You better not be tryin’ any tricks –’

  Con screwed up her eyes as she swallowed down the brew, and coughed a little. Hela took the goblet away. A faint white foam moustache coated Con’s upper lip, and Motti dabbed at it with his sleeve.

  Coldhardt watched the acolyte leave the room. ‘So, healing potions aside, Hela’s people need a fresh source of the snake-root. And that’s what you need, isn’t it Samraj, if you are to develop your own, personal elixir of life.’ He drained his own drink. ‘Genetically modified Amrita. The means to live for ever while enjoying life to its fullest.’

  ‘Precisely.’ Motti could see Samraj was practically drooling at the thought. ‘Alas, the snake-root has not been seen on Earth for at least a thousand years. And the Cult of Ophiuchus lost the location of the catacombs long before, during the persecutions of the Dark Ages.’

  ‘The only written reference to the catacombs known to exist is in the Spartan cipher obtained by my father,’ said Yianna proudly. ‘Spartan soldiers stumbled upon them – and the secrets within.’

  Motti remembered Jonah translating the cipher for them back in the safety of the hub. ‘Catacombs, north, stars buried in patterns or something, right?’

  Yianna nodded. ‘That cipher proves that the catacombs must be located in a place of Spartan military activity in the fourth century BC.’

  ‘But now, thanks to Hela’s tip-off, we can be more precise,’ said Samraj. ‘Each lekythos used by Ophiuchus’s followers was encoded with directions to the sacred location of the holy catacombs.’

  Motti looked at Coldhardt meaningfully.

  ‘We have nothing to bargain with, Motti,’ he sighed. ‘Samraj took our fragments from the Siena hub when she took me.’

  ‘And once the complete cipher is cracked, the last piece of the puzzle will fall into place,’ she said. ‘I shall have found the catacombs – and the snake-root. The flesh of the gods.’

  ‘Did it occur to you that the cultists may be lying to make you help them?’ Coldhardt suggested. ‘Telling you exactly what you want to hear so you play along?’

  Samraj shrugged, apparently unbothered. ‘I am merely diagnosing their conditions at present. Comparing their chromosomes against ours. No treatment until I test the truth of their story.’

  ‘And what if the snake-root no longer grows?’

  ‘Even if it does not, there should be enough genetic material left behind to make a fuller study of its properties.’

  ‘Well, then. There’s just one thing I don’t understand.’ Coldhardt set down his half-empty glass. ‘Yianna told you the secrets of her father’s fragments, and presumably some time ago. You had no need to engage my services to steal them from Demnos. So why did you?’

  ‘Can you really be such a fool?’ Samraj advanced slowly on Coldhardt. ‘I wanted to involve you in my affairs once again. I’ve already told you I don’t care about your double-crosses. I understand you had an impeccable motive.’

  She took his hands in hers. He didn’t pull away.

  ‘You weren’t just stealing secrets for me or for Demnos,’ Samraj said, and pressed a kiss softly against his lips. ‘You were stealing them for yourself. It was never the money you wanted. You wanted the secret of immortality for yourself.’

  ‘Is that true?’ asked Motti.

  ‘You can’t understand, being so young,’ said Coldhardt quietly, talking to him but still looking at Samraj. ‘You don’t know how it feels to reach my years … to know that time’s running out.’ Now he looked at Motti with the full force of those haunted blue eyes. ‘To know what’s waiting for you, when you die …’

  Motti glanced around with a sick feeling. ‘Reckon I’m gonna be finding out sometime soon.’

  ‘This need not be the end,’ Samraj told Coldhardt. ‘I appreciate your value. And if I am to live for ever, I shall need a consort. A partner.’

  Coldhardt smiled. ‘And what must I do to earn this honour?’

  ‘I need to know the location of the catacombs,’ she said softly. ‘That little boy you acquired – Jonah Wish. He can break the lekythos cipher, and quickly. Bring him to me.’

  ‘No way,’ snapped Motti. ‘Jonah bailed. He’s history.’

  ‘It’s true, he resigned,’ Coldhardt admitted. ‘But there are ways of getting him back.’

  Motti stared at him. ‘What, you’re gonna sell him out?’

  ‘It may take a day or so to locate him and to lure him here,’ Coldhardt went on, Samraj his only focus. ‘But he’ll come. And I guarantee he can be …persuaded to help.’

  ‘A day or so? Then we have some time to kill together.’ Samraj all but licked her lips. ‘And soon, all the time in the world. Imagine what we could achieve …’

  ‘Perhaps we should discuss it,’ Coldhardt agreed. ‘Alone.’

  ‘You cannot be serious!’ Motti shouted, jumping up from the couch. One of Samraj’s thugs advanced on him warningly.

  ‘Let the children run along to bed,’ said Coldhardt.

  ‘Yianna, take them to the guest room. Do make sure they’re snuggled up tight.’ Samraj paused. ‘Remember, Nathaniel. If you try to trick me, they’ll be killed.’

  Coldhardt shrugged. ‘They’re not important any more.’

  The words were said so casually but fell like scalding water into Motti’s ears. He bunched his fists, wanted to lash out, smash up the place. But then the bruisers’ arms were gripping hold of him, bundling him away. He screamed and struggled. Con was dragged up from the couch, woozy, blinking in confusion.

  Coldhardt watched as they were taken away, his face impossible to read, melting anyway in Motti’s eyes as the first stinging tears welled up.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jonah strained to set right Coldhardt’s computer
on the desk, while Tye and Patch waded through the debris in the junior hub for any clue the abductors might have left behind.

  But as he worked, adjusting cables and calibrating the screen, his attention kept turning to the note on Coldhardt’s desk beside the hanky. ‘MISS ME, Cx,’ he murmured. Then he sat down in the plush leather office chair. ‘There was a big struggle here, that’s obvious,’ he announced. ‘Whoever did this was looking for something in particular.’

  ‘Most likely those bits of the funeral vase,’ Tye agreed, trying half-heartedly to straighten out a mad stack of parchments.

  ‘And obviously, he couldn’t write a note telling us what happened. It would be found and destroyed.’

  ‘So he sends us a kiss?’ Patch sat down awkwardly on a chair with one leg missing. ‘He’s flipped.’

  ‘Nah. He’s just a clever old sod, as well we know.’ Jonah tapped a finger on the piece of paper. ‘What if the C isn’t for Coldhardt?’

  ‘What else would it be for?’

  ‘C is 100 in Roman numerals. And X is ten.’

  ‘So, 110?’ Patch frowned. ‘What’s that meant to mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jonah. ‘But the Miss part could mean a woman.’

  Tye leaned forward. ‘Samraj?’

  ‘And the “me” part …’ Jonah tapped the computer. ‘What if this was still on the desk and switched on when he scribbled out this note? Maybe he was trying to draw our attention to it.’

  Patch had stood back up again, hopping from foot to foot. Either he needed the toilet or he was getting excited. ‘So how do we find out what was on there?’

  ‘I set an auto-recover going. Rebuilding his desktop as it was when the power was tugged out …’ He clicked over the keys. ‘Keep your fingers crossed.’

  Tye and Patch came over to join him. Jonah’s heart was beating out a wild rhythm as he waited for the computer’s creaks and whirrings to resolve into a result.