The Code War (7 page)

'Now sit down all of you while I explain
what we're about.' She set herself in the most comfortable chair in
the room and motioned them to gather round her in a
semi-circle.

Gog and Magog, who had remained
impassive throughout, stood guarding the door. No-one was
leaving.

Kodrob and his subordinates took
their seats awkwardly. They expected to be bullied by a senior red
priestess like Bezejel, not seated with her as though almost
equal.

'You're all under orders to keep
this information absolutely secret,' she began quietly but firmly.
'You don't share this with anyone. Not your mates and not your
whores.'

They all nodded in unison, 'Yes
ma'am.'

Bezejel took out a knife and
tumbled it through her fingers. 'Every few hundred years on Earth
someone comes along who's very special. Very special indeed. In
Earth's twentieth century we got lucky and had a couple of great
supporters. Both took a long time to get going. One was an
uneducated peasant with a drunk for a dad. The other was a homeless
orphan who often slept rough.'

The Marauders nodded, knowing very
well who she was speaking about.
Kodrob
looked around the table. This was a new experience for them. His
boys were used to being treated like dogs by senior officers. But
here they were being given the inside track, the full political
philosophy of Hell from a female right at the top. This mission
must be really important.

Bezejel continued. 'Tyrants don't
start out powerful. They become that way through circumstances. The
important thing is this: both of those men came from shattered
beginnings. Broken-down families are our friends. They bring us
many recruits. Those men set out to piece the world together.
Instead they broke the world in pieces and brought us many
fortunate souls in the process.' Bezejel's eyes had gone black,
like a cat before the pounce. 'Sadly, they overreached themselves
and burnt out too quick.'

She looked across at the wall. The
charcoal Leader gazed back, inspiring her.

'Civilisation recovered quickly
and they've had peace and order on an appalling scale. It's
distressing to watch s
o many children
growing up without ever having to fight for their lives. We watch
them being sold the emptiness of unadventurous prosperity and being
told the lie that it's good to look after the weak. Look at me
closely, while I spell this out.'

The squad looked reluctantly into
her intense, beautiful eyes. She held up the knife and shook it in
front of them to reinforce her point.

'Charity only helps the weak
survive. It's the road to decline. What does it teach the strong
about survival?' Bezejel paused for effect. 'Nothing. It was
millions of years of fighting, kicking and dying that taught
humanity how to survive, nothing else.'

Now Kodrob understood her. None of the
demons in Inferno were there by choice. If they opened the gates of
Hell, every soul would choose to leave. But Bezejel was different.
She was a true believer. No wonder the Leader liked her so
much.

Bezejel pushed the knife deep into
the table for effect.
'But now High
Command have spotted someone who could re-cast Earth's social
landscape and put it back the way it should be. The way it always
was. A young female who has the skills and talents we need in
abundance. Right now she's quite the little lady. But she also
displays a promising ability to manipulate others. She knows how to
use fear to achieve her aims. We've looked deep into her
psychological profile and she has dark potential that's off the
scale. She has an eye for detail and an organisational ability that
most human leaders lack. We believe that with the right spiritual
guidance and carefully-chosen experiences she can be turned. To our
way of thinking. She has the power to take over and lead one of the
few well-managed criminal organisations on Earth and turn it into
an empire that will truly last a thousand years. It will get its
claws into every government, corporation and military
establishment. It will control them through fear, money and the
kind of sex on demand they haven't seen since the days of the great
harems. We'll have war on tap. Civil war, cold war, red hot nuclear
war. We'll be able to turn them on and off whenever we like. Mostly
on. Orphans will fill the Earth and grow up to become tyrants and
warlords in their turn. Everything is coming nicely into place. The
young woman is the last piece of the jigsaw we need. No-one
suspects her and even if the angels knew of our plan, they wouldn't
be able to stop it. We've run war games on this and there isn't any
way they can prevent us.'

Bezejel paused, looking for
reaction.

'This is very exciting, Madam
Bezejel.' Kodrob looked around the table, showing he was speaking
for all of them. 'It's the kind of plan we've all been yearning for
since we arrived in Hades. What do we need to do?'

'We've created a trail that the
young woman needs to follow. It's a code trail that will lead her
naturally to us. Once she gets to the end of the trail, she's ours
and we will own both her and her future. My mission.
Our
mission,' she corrected herself looking meaningfully around
the circle, 'is to make sure she stays on the trail and picks up
each sequence in the code. That is our destructive
purpose.'

'Thank you ma'am we won't let you down,'
said Kodrob earnestly.

'Thank you ma'am,' they all
muttered. The meeting seemed to be over.

Bezejel reclaimed her knife and
put it away. She stood up as if she was ready to go.
Then she folded her arms across her chest and
walked around the room till she stood beside the image of the
Leader. She regarded it for a moment and then abruptly stepped in
front of it.

'There's one more thing.'

Silence returned.

'The young woman I have been
describing has no family.
She, too, is an
orphan. And she has lost touch with her past. We must ensure she
does not rediscover it.'

Eilat,
Israel

The coach
transporting Martin, Andy, Pete and Nancy from Tel Aviv
airport arrived at the end of the lane that led to their rented
apartment in Eilat. This small coastal town lying at one end of the
Red Sea with its crystal clear waters and beaches of fine sand had
offered excellent value accommodation. Only 200 kilometres from
Jerusalem yet effectively a part of the desert, Eilat was a new
town built on an ancient seaport.

Now as they alighted from the
air-conditioned vehicle into the open air, it felt like walking
into a furnace. Nancy gazed at the low flat-roofed building
indicated by the coach driver and compared it with the picture in
the brochure she had brought with her.

At the
other end of the lane, only a few hundred metres away she
could see the beach promenade where vacationers could saunter in
the evening heat and soak up the atmosphere. Beyond that was the
sea, as sparklingly blue as sun-lit topaz and as inviting as a new
lover. It called to them with forget-your-cares promises that said
plunge in, explore me, let me take away your worries.

'I can't wait to get
to the beach,' called Nancy. 'I'm sure you're
all the same. But, first things first, we must get settled in and
unpack.'

'Absolutely,' they all shouted.

The driver handed them their
baggage from the belly of the coach.
Then
he waved goodbye and drove off in a cloud of diesel
smoke.

It was a typical, hot end of
s
ummer day in the Middle East. A thin
scattering of cloud did little to deflect the heat. Nancy could
feel her blouse sticking to her skin.

She
reached for her sunglasses while the boys looked around
them, squinting and blinking in the sun before donning their own
shades.

Nancy remembered the conversation
she had had with Mel when she had revealed her plans.

‘
You and those three
boys all making house together in a cramped villa,’ she guffawed.
‘I know your sort Nancy, you’re too greedy by far.’

‘
Rubbish. I’ll be
like a big sister to them,’ Nancy had retorted. ‘The very idea of
me seeing any one of them as boyfriend material is ridiculous.
They’re barely out of nappies. Anyway they’ll be too busy with
their studies during the day and writing up their notes in the
evening. I’ll be perfectly happy with my own company.’

But that was before she had worked
out how she would get herself
to the
kibbutz where her Great Uncle Shai lived. Her plan to achieve this
had changed everything.

‘
Come on then, let’s
take a look inside our palace,’ she urged the others
cheerily.

The boys too, were looking anxiously at
the small property.

‘
Pete, I think you
might have to sleep with your legs hanging out the window,’ joked
Andy. Pete was well over 6 feet tall.

‘
Well, I doubt if you
and Martin will be able to squeeze into the shower together like
you normally do at college,’ Pete retorted.

Andy had to have the last
word.
‘He’s not the problem. It's you I
worry about. Just don’t use it as an excuse to cuddle up to me on
the sofa.’

Why did boys always tease each
other about being gay, Nancy wondered to herself?

She
plucked the front door key from underneath a flowerpot of
blossoming bougainvillea. 'A burglar would never think of looking
here,' she laughed to the boys. Then she unlocked the door and
stepped back to let them enter before her.

As the last of the three passed
through the entrance
in front of her,
Nancy fumbled in her skirt pocket. Holding her case in one hand,
she produced a tiny perfume atomiser, already with its cap
off.

'I'm right behind you,' she shouted as
she squeezed a tiny jet of perfume behind one ear and then behind
the other.

Must
n't
overdo it, need to be subtle, she said to herself as she put the
atomiser away and prepared to enter.

A hundred yards away, near the
promenade, a man was watching Nancy and her charges while
pretending to read an Arab language newspaper that he held out in
front of him. He was sitting at a café table and an empty espresso
cup lay before him. He stubbed out a cigarette and folded the paper
twice before calling for another coffee.

He remained watching until the
four had closed the door behind them.
Then he got up and walked to the promenade and got into the
back of a black Mercedes which moved away smoothly and joined the
traffic.

Nancy
stepped through the threshold into a short corridor. Andy
returned and took her case from her as a gallant gentleman should.
'Let me take that for you, Nance, the corridor's a bit narrow.' He
had a twinkle in his eye. Nancy watched him carefully. Maybe he was
a gentleman. Or maybe it just part of the competitive ritual, to
get ahead of the others.

On the right of the corridor, two
doors led into identical bedrooms. There were two single beds in
each room.

On the left of the corridor was a shower
room and a small kitchenette and at the end was a TV lounge with a
two-seater sofa and two easy chairs.

Nancy walked into the TV room. The
boys preceded her, dropping their bags in the corridor and taking
off their sunglasses.

T
hey
seemed reluctant to be presumptive about which beds or bedrooms
should be theirs.

Nancy felt the tension in the air
immediately. She decided to allow it to build. It would make her
job easier.

The boys walked almost wordlessly
from room to room getting their bearings and peering out of the
windows. Gradually they returned from their meandering and gathered
together awkwardly in the TV room. On the wall was a map of Israel.
Andy was standing in front of it, tracing the route they had come
with his finger.

Nancy stood beside him.
'Ooh, there must be a lot of interesting places
to visit nearby,' she remarked casually. 'Have you brought your
driving licence with you, Andy?'

'Yes, I brought it in case of
emergencies. But I'm not planning to do any driving here. A hire
car would cost a fortune. And anyway Professor Aaronovitch is going
to drive us to the dig every day in his car. Why do you
ask?'

'Oh, I was just wondering.'
Nancy's innocent smile wouldn't have fooled a
child. But the boys' minds weren't on maps or driving. They were
occupied by something far more primal. One girl among three
men.

The
suitcases remained in the hall outside the bedrooms. Nancy
noticed that the scent of her perfume had filled the room. It must
be driving them crazy. She slowly inspected all the furnishings,
dancing her fingers over the ornaments and swaying her hips as she
went.

'Isn't this menorah lovely? Such
elegant arms it has.
And they've left us
some fruit.' She picked up an apple and turned it in her
hand.

Martin planted himself
in one of the chairs. The other two boys took
the sofa.