Time Riders: The Doomsday Code (15 page)

Sal answered first. ‘It’s an M?’

‘Yup. You got it. Go on – see if you can do the rest.’

Sal grabbed a pen off the desk and with a grin quickly and easily extracted the encoded message.

‘There you go,’ said Adam. ‘Easy as easy peas.’

Liam held a finger up. ‘But, err … this is a Freemason code, isn’t it? Won’t that mean any Freemason who stumbles across our gravestone will be able to translate our message as well?’

‘Yup, which is why we need to adapt it slightly. If I jumble the order of the letters now, like this …’ Adam drew the pattern again, but this time filled in the letters in a random order.

‘Now, provided you keep your messages
very
short so that no frequency analysis techniques can be used, then it’s almost impossible to break unless you throw some serious computer power at it.’

‘Frequency analysis techniques?’

Adam was about to explain that to Liam, but Maddy cut in. ‘Perhaps later.’ She picked up the sheet of paper and held it up for Bob and Becks to study closely. ‘You guys can remember this layout?’

‘Affirmative,’ said Bob, leaning forward. ‘I now have a stored digital image.’

‘Affirmative,’ echoed Becks.

‘Good. So … that’s how you’re going to talk to us.’ She tucked the paper into the hip pocket of her jeans for safekeeping. ‘And you’ll need to let us know when and where to open a portal. We’ll do the usual thing and plan a day-later one, week-later, a fortnight-later and of course one just before the six-month critical mission window.’

‘What’s
critical
about six months?’ asked Adam.

‘Bob’s and Becks’s heads blow up.’

‘Whuh? Did you just say …?’

‘It’s a safety measure, to ensure the computer tech doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.’ Maddy wrinkled her nose. ‘More sort of a
fizzle
than a
bang
, really. The circuits fry.’

‘Oh, right.’

She resumed her briefing. ‘So those are the window times, Liam, but … since we don’t really have a clear mission plan, I’m guessing this is all going to boil down to you telling us where and when you want to be picked up. Are you OK with that?’

Liam nodded. ‘Aye. And you’ve got these photographs, you say?’

Adam nodded. ‘Yes. Not on me.’ He turned to Maddy. ‘Back at my apartment. On my hard drive. I’ll need to go get it.’

She pursed her lips. ‘Sal or me will have to go with you to get it, then.’

‘What if the gravestone isn’t there?’ said Sal.

‘It should be,’ said Adam.

Maddy puffed her cheeks. ‘Hmmmm, well, look – if it isn’t, for whatever reason, then you come back on the first of the scheduled windows, I guess. Just play it safe. Don’t go wandering off to see King John until you
know
you can talk to us.’

‘Recommendation: first mission task should be to locate the gravestone and send a test message,’ said Bob.

‘That’s quite right,’ replied Maddy. ‘Very sensible, Bob.’

She looked around at everyone. ‘So … I think that’s it.’ She smiled. ‘This is a hunt for something we have no idea what it is, or where it is – other than some nasty guy with a hood stole it and ran off into the woods. So it’s the usual half-baked, no-idea-what-we’re-doing thing again. Business as usual, I guess.’

She dismissed them all with a self-conscious
shall we?
As Liam turned to follow Bob and Becks across the archway and up the ladder she reached out for Liam and squeezed his shoulder.

‘Liam?’

‘Yuh?’

She glanced at the plume of silver hair at his temple and the first faint hint of an age line around his eyes.

‘Liam, I’m glad I told you – and Sal – the truth. It was eating me up sitting on it.’

He hunched his shoulders. ‘A load shared is a load halved. That’s what me Auntie Doe used to say.’

‘You stay safe …
again
, OK?’

He grinned. ‘With Punch and Judy, I’ll be fine, so.’

He turned to go, but she held on. ‘Liam, this is an important one, you know? I’ve got a real feeling this – I dunno … that this is going to open doors. We find out about Pandora and we’re going to find out more about who we’re working for,’ she said quietly.

‘It’s a certain Mr Waldstein, isn’t it?’

She shrugged. ‘So Foster once told us. I do wonder.’

‘Now there’s an idea.’

‘What?’

‘Foster. Maybe you should ask the ol’ fella about Pandora while we’re gone.’

‘I was sort of thinking of doing that,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I guess now I’ve told you guys, telling him won’t hurt, right?’

He cocked his head. ‘I trust him.’

She smiled at Liam, realizing that in his cheeky cock-eyed grin she could see the ghost of Foster’s gaunt face. ‘Yeah, me too.’

The archway echoed with the splash of water as Bob dropped into the displacement tube.

They found the graveyard towards the rear of the priory, a sombre space occupied by only a half dozen stones and a dozen wooden crosses on which hungry beetle-black crows perched, studying the frosted white ground for signs of a meal.

A recent grave marked only by a long hump of turned soil and a simple wooden cross indicated the most recently deceased person to be buried in this place was not considered worthy of a piece of inscribed masonry.

In the pale grey light they hunkered down beside each grave in turn and noted the names. Eventually, to Liam’s relief, they found Haskette’s grave beside a small oak sapling that had pushed hopefully upwards for sunlight and rustled gently in the bitter cold breeze. The grave was marked by a three-foot-high block of pale granite, the name and year of death chiselled roughly, clearly not by a trained artisan but presumably by one of the Cistercian monks.

‘Recommendation: we should inscribe no more than the symbol for an “L” to indicate you have located the stone,’ said Bob. Liam nodded. He was right – best to carve no more than was absolutely necessary. ‘Uh … did anyone think to bring a chisel?’

‘Negative.’

He cursed then looked around. There had to be something they could improvise with. But he could see nothing out here but withered grass and nettles, frost-stiff and frozen-hard soil peppered with discarded flakes of worked stone and flint.

Flint.
That could do us.

He began to scrabble in the hard ground to free a piece large enough that it could be used as a makeshift tool when Becks quietly came over and tapped the top of his head.

‘Unnecessary, Liam O’Connor,’ she said.

‘Uh?’ He looked up just in time to see Bob pulling a long lumber nail out of the wooden crucifix of the freshly dug grave. With a mournful squeak it came out and the crossbar clattered on to the hard hummock of dark soil, disturbing the nearby crows. They fluttered away noisily into the tumbling grey sky with
caws
of complaint.

‘Errrr … you can’t just go and do that!’ he said, absently blessing himself with the tips of his fingers.

Bob casually strode past him towards the gravestone. ‘Why not?’

‘Well, it’s … it’s just not right. That’s a
desecration
, so it is.’

Bob was already hunkered down over the gravestone and etching their pigpen symbol for ‘L’ into its granite surface.

Liam glanced heaven-ward. ‘Uhhh, really sorry about that … if you’re watchin’.’

‘’Tis later in the morning than I’d hoped to set off,’ called out Cabot irritably as he strapped the yoke to a pair of horses. ‘That is, if ye still wish me to take ye to meet John?’

‘Yes, yes we do,’ replied Liam.

‘Where’ve ye been?’

‘To get some fresh air,’ replied Liam as they skirted round the vegetable gardens towards the stables. He nodded at Becks. ‘Our lady was feeling sick.’

Cabot stuck out his chin. ‘Are ye better now, m’dear?’

Becks glanced quickly at Liam for guidance but he stepped in to answer for her. ‘She’s fine, so she is, aren’t you … Lady Rebecca?’

She managed to nod mutely and swiftly adapt her usual tomboy swaggering walk to something that, all of a sudden, looked a little more feminine as they drew up beside Cabot and the cart.

‘Noble-born, are ye?’ The old man’s eyes narrowed as he regarded her mud-brown dress made of coarse material and her peasant’s clogs. ‘
Lady
, are ye now?’ he said with a disbelieving tone in his voice. ‘Hmmm … and from what duchy do ye hail then?’

Liam looked at her.
Come on, Becks, better make it sound convincing.

Her cool grey eyes returned Cabot’s suspicious stare for a painful few seconds, long enough that Liam wondered whether he’d made a mistake casually introducing her as an aristocrat.

‘
Je viens de la duché d’Alevingnon en Normandy
.’

Cabot’s manner changed instantly; his flinty soldier’s eyes widened. ‘Ma’am, please forgive my rude manner! I just –’

She smiled. ‘It is quite all right, old man,’ she replied sweetly. ‘Our mission to recover this …
item
 … requires a certain anonymity.’

Brilliant
. Liam grinned at her.
Bleedin’ brilliant.
He could have hugged her there and then. But of course, now that she was supposedly a high-born, that would be inappropriate.

Cabot gestured to the cart, a simple wooden trap covered with a canvas awning, and two pot-bellied ponies scraping the frost-hardened ground with their hooves, impatient to get going.

‘’Tis not much, ma’am, but it is all we have here at the priory.’

She nodded calmly, almost serenely. ‘The vehicle is sufficient.’

‘And far better ye travel in a humble trader’s cart than in anything that might attract the interest of bandits,’ added Cabot.

Becks nodded. ‘Indeed.’

Liam smiled. ‘M’lady seems happy.’

Cabot looked up at a heavy sky that promised snow. ‘Then we ought to leave with haste. ’Tis three days, but only if there is no snow. Three days to Prince John’s winter residence.’ He pulled aside the canvas cover at the back of the cart. ‘There ye are, m’lady,’ he said, offering a calloused hand to help her up into the trap, but she ignored that and hopped up with all the regal grace of a squaddie scrambling up into the back of an army truck.

Liam pursed his lips. ‘Lady Rebecca’s a very
independent
woman, so she is.’

‘Aye,’ nodded Cabot, ‘noticed that.’

Bob clambered aboard behind her and the cart dipped and wobbled under his weight.

‘Best we get going,’ said Cabot to Liam. ‘We will wish to be well clear of the forests before it gets dark later this afternoon.’

‘I’m not going to run off and find the first news station I can and blab all about you, you know.’

Maddy followed Adam up the steps and through a rotating glass door, into a quiet lobby. Before them the apartment block’s security guard looked up from behind a newspaper and a desk and smiled warmly at Adam.

‘Lovely evening, ain’t it, Mr Lewis?’

‘Isn’t it, Jerry?’ he replied cheerfully. ‘Unseasonably clement for the time of year.’

Jerry looked like the kind of guy who’d once worked homicide but been put out to pasture. He sat back in a seat that creaked beneath his weight and laughed. ‘Tha’s what I love about you Brits … always got somethin’ real smart-soundin’ to say about the weather!’

Adam shared his good-natured cackle with a wave and swept past his desk towards the elevators at the back of the foyer. He jabbed a button and they watched in silence as a number display slowly counted down, and listened to the muted rumble of early-evening traffic outside, the rustle of the newspaper in Jerry’s hands.