Time Riders: The Doomsday Code Page 3

  ‘A warning shot is it, sir?’

  Geoffrey pressed his lips tightly. The warning had already been given. Nonetheless, he decided if one more caution could save bloodshed on such a cold and Godless day it was a breath worth expending.

  ‘Step aside, or ye shall be fired upon!’

  For a moment the man’s response was the same. Nothing. Then, slowly, he began to stride through the ankle-deep snow towards them.

  Bates turned to him. ‘Sir?’

  This foolish man was going to die, then. Perhaps that was what he wanted: a martyr’s death. Geoffrey had seen too much of that these last few years – men hungry to die on the battlefield for all the promises they’d been made about sins forgiven.

  ‘Take him down.’

  Bates swiftly shouldered the crossbow, aimed and fired. The twang of the string echoed off the trees as the bolt flickered across the twenty yards between them. With a smack it embedded itself into something beneath the flowing dark robes. But the man’s stride remained unbroken.

  ‘Good God!’ Geoffrey whispered under his breath.

  The hooded man, now no more than a dozen yards away, produced a broadsword from beneath his cape with an effortless sweep of his arm.

  ‘Prepare to fight!’ shouted Geoffrey over his shoulder at the others. ‘Sergeants, defend the cart!’

  He was joined by the other three knights, all younger, some fitter than him, but all of them prepared to die to safeguard what lay behind them, secure in a nondescript wooden box and nestling in the back of their baggage cart.

  The squires, not fighting men but hired valets, drew back to gather the horses’ reins, and watch over the column’s possessions. Geoffrey regarded his three brethren, all seasoned fighters, veterans of King Richard’s crusade. Despite this man shrugging off the impact of a bolt – still protruding from his chest – he was sure, between the four of them, that this was to be a short fight.

  The hooded man broke into a sudden sprint as he closed the last yards between them, raising the five-foot length of his cumbersome blade as if it was no heavier than a clerk’s quill.

  Geoffrey and the youngest, William, hefted their blades aloft, two-handed as Geoffrey had taught, poised ready to swing down. The hooded man’s final stride brought him within range of strike and William swept his blade down first, aiming it at the vulnerable ‘L’ between neck and shoulder. His sword clanged on something hard beneath the cape – armour for sure. His sword hummed with vibration as it bounced off the man and continued down into the snow. The hooded man’s response was a blur of movement and the glint of the broadsword through air. Young William was a dead man before his legs had begun to buckle. His head toppled down beside him into the crisp white snow, eyes still blinking surprise.

  Geoffrey swung his sword in a reckless roundhouse sweep, hoping if not to cleave the man in two then at least to knock him off his balance. His sweep ended with jarring suddenness and a metallic clang. He grunted a curse. The hooded man had to be wearing a complete suit of battle armour beneath that cape, and yet he moved with the agility of a man almost naked.

  The response was a whip-snap blur and before Geoffrey had fully understood the result of the blow he was looking down at the blade being yanked firmly from his sternum. In a fog of incomprehension he found himself lying in the snow, looking up at the grey sky, the flakes settling lightly on his cheeks and nose. His mind was still dealing with the ridiculous notion that, for him, the fight was already over. He – a man who’d fought Saracens all his life, killed hundreds of men – was now reduced by a single thrust to being a pathetic panting body staining virgin snow with his blood.

  Far off he was aware of voices screaming. The sound of fear and anger and the metallic clang and rasp of metal on metal: an exchange of swordplay that seemed to come to an end horrifyingly quickly. The voices receded – the squires, perhaps even the sergeants, running for their lives.

  Then finally silence. He was aware of the crows still circling above, and the soft crunch of snow underfoot as someone slowly approached him.

  Daylight was blocked out by the hooded man leaning over him. Geoffrey thought he caught the glint of armour amid the shadows of his cowl.

  How can an armoured man move so quickly?

  Then his fading mind was aware of another person leaning over him.

  ‘Where is it?’ said the new man.

  Geoffrey spat congealing blood out on to his cheek. ‘We … we have … no … money.’

  ‘I’m not after your money,’ said the man. ‘I’ve come for the relic. No matter, we’ll find it ourselves.’

  Geoffrey’s grey eyes tried focusing on him. ‘Y-you … know … of it?’

  The man’s voice softened, almost kindly now. ‘Yes. I’m one of your brotherhood.’ Geoffrey felt a hand under his cropped hair, lifting his head out of the snow. ‘Here’s something to ease the pain.’

  The second man, a lean face framed by long hair and a beard, lifted a glass bottle to his lips. He tasted a strong mead.

  ‘I’m truly sorry,’ said the man. ‘But we must have it.’ He sighed.

  ‘The … the relic … is to … be taken to Scotland. It must … it must be kept safe for –’

  ‘For future generations,’ the man completed his words. ‘Yes, I know this. That’s why we’re here.’ He smiled. ‘We are that future generation and we’ve come for it.’

  Geoffrey could feel death coming fast; warm and welcoming. And yet his mind felt compelled to know more. His mission had failed. It was to be taken from him and now he needed assurance.

  ‘Ye … ye are … a …?’

  ‘A Templar? Yes.’

  Geoffrey’s eyes were far off now … looking for hosts of angels to guide him to the Kingdom of Heaven.

  ‘We’ve come from near the time that it all happens … and we have to know the truth. We’ve come to find out. It will be safe, brother … I promise you that. We will keep it safe.’

  The words meant nothing to the knight now. His breathing, short and rapid puffs of tainted air, finally ceased with a soft gurgle.

  The man gently eased the knight’s head back down on to the snow and traced the sign of the cross along the red cruciform on the man’s white tunic. Then he looked up at the hooded figure, kneeling in the snow beside him. He nodded towards the abandoned baggage cart. ‘It’ll be there somewhere. Find it.’

  The hooded man silently stood up and strode towards the cart.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the Templar whispered again to the dead knight, gently closing the lids of his eyes. ‘But we simply have to know.’

  CHAPTER 5

  2001, New York

  Liam winced at the noise. It was so loud he could feel something inside his ears vibrate, and that surely couldn’t be healthy. Maddy had dragged him to the front of the small nightclub’s dance floor; dragged him by the hand until they’d found a gap just in front of the stage. He’d been prepared to stand there and listen while the band had been playing a slower, quieter, almost pleasant song. But then, without any warning at all, they’d taken a passable piece of music and turned it into a screaming, banging cacophony of sound that made his ears hurt. And, of course, all the other weird-looking youngsters standing around him had started jumping up and down for some reason and rudely pushing and shoving him and each other.

  He soon had enough of that and left Maddy and Sal bouncing up and down like idiots. He squeezed his way through the crowd, quickly giving up on his excuse mes and pardon mes until he found Becks standing at the back of the nightclub, calmly studying the behaviour of everyone inside like a scientist studying a cage full of lab rats.

  ‘They call this music, so they do,’ he shouted. ‘Music – would you believe that?’

  ‘Affirmative,’ she shouted back at him. ‘Spectrum analysis of the frequency envelope and beats per minute indicate this music matches other tracks identified collectively as Death Metal.’

  ‘Death Metal, is it now? More like Deaf-and-Mental.’

 
She looked at him. ‘Negative. I said Death …’ She hesitated. ‘That was a joke, wasn’t it, Liam?’

  He shrugged. ‘Aye.’

  She practised a laugh she’d been working on; against the din of the band’s final chorus it sounded coarse and braying and not particularly lady-like. He shook his head and looked back at the dance floor, a seething, bouncing carpet of hair and sweaty heads, nose rings and tattooed shoulders, while five willowy young men on the stage jerked and twitched over their instruments. He decided they looked like something out of a travelling freak show.

  Jay-zus, so this is ‘the modern world’, is it?

  ‘Ah, come on,’ laughed Maddy. ‘Lighten up, Liam. You sound like my granddad.’

  ‘Yes, it wasn’t exactly the bangra-thrash I’m used to,’ added Sal, ‘but – shadd-yah – they were proper good!’

  ‘Good?’ Liam huffed as they stepped out of the warm and humid fug of the nightclub into the cool September night. ‘I’ve heard angle-grinders along the Liverpool docks make a more tolerable noise than that.’ He tutted grumpily. ‘Now, are you sure those fellas back there actually knew how to play their instruments?’

  ‘It’s not about how well you play, Liam,’ said Maddy, ‘it’s the – I don’t know … it’s the energy, the attitude. You know?’

  ‘Attitude, is it?’ They stepped out of West 51st Street on to Broadway, leaving the milling crowd of emos and grunge rockers dispersing behind them.

  ‘Yes, attitude. It’s about getting an emotion across to the audience. Laying out how you feel.’

  Becks cocked her head in thought. ‘That would indicate the musicians were feeling moderate to extreme levels of irritation about something.’

  Liam laughed.

  ‘Anger,’ said Maddy.

  ‘And that’s all you need, is it? To be very angry and very noisy?’

  ‘Umm …’ Maddy made a face. ‘Well, not exactly …’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sal. ‘Angry and noisy is exactly what music sounds like in ’26.’

  As they walked down Broadway towards Times Square, quieter than they’d ever seen it, Maddy checked her watch.

  ‘You’re sure your idea works?’ asked Liam.

  She nodded. ‘We don’t need a portal back to our field office. It’s nearly midnight now. The time bubble will reset in a couple of minutes. By the time we’ve walked back down and across the bridge we’ll be an hour into Monday.’

  ‘But won’t we, like, meet a copy of ourselves?’

  ‘That doesn’t happen,’ replied Maddy. ‘We don’t copy. There’s us and we’re either here or there, but not in two places.’

  ‘I don’t get that,’ Sal replied.

  Liam stuffed his hands in his pockets. ‘Actually, I wasn’t thinking so much about the time thing … just that this is going to be a long walk, so it is.’

  The girls laughed at that. Becks dutifully copied them.

  ‘I would have thought you’d be used to walking?’ said Maddy.

  ‘Why? Because I’m just some potato-eatin’ Paddy from a hundred years ago?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that exactly. It’s just I don’t suppose there were many cars or buses an’ stuff.’

  ‘Jay-zus, we’re not jungle savages, you know. We have … had … trams and trains and the like in Cork, so we did. I didn’t like walkin’ much then, just as I’m not so keen on doing it now.’

  Broadway led them on to Times Square, which was much busier. The cinemas were spilling out those who’d been watching the late showings of Shrek and Monsters Inc., and yellow cabs queued in the central reserve to pick up the last of the well-dressed audience for Mamma Mia!.

  Sal staggered for a moment.

  ‘You OK?’ asked Maddy.

  ‘Dizzy.’

  ‘It was a bit loud in there, I guess. My ears are still ring–’

  Sal shook her head and looked up. ‘Not that. I just felt the ground shift.’ She looked at them. ‘You didn’t feel it?’

  Liam and Maddy shook their heads. Maddy looked around at the busy thoroughfare. Nothing looked any different to her. ‘Sal? Was it a … ?’

  ‘Yes. A small one, I think.’ Her eyes systematically scanned the buildings, the people, the cabs.

  ‘See anything?’

  ‘Not yet … not yet. Give me a second.’ It was difficult. She was used to scanning Tuesday morning at 8.30 a.m., the routine she’d established. She could describe that particular moment and place in time down to the tiniest detail now. But this was Times Square thirty-two hours earlier, with different people doing different things. Then her eyes landed on a poster outside the Golden Screen cinema.

  ‘Over there,’ she said, pointing and stepping quickly through a logjam of cars and pedestrians to get to the far side of the square. A minute later the others joined her as she ran her fingers across the scuffed perspex cover over the sidewalk poster. ‘This is new,’ she said. ‘This isn’t meant to be here. Not on Tuesday morning, it isn’t. I’m certain.’

  Maddy looked it over. The poster displayed a picture of a young man on the run, being chased by helicopters and black Humvees through some European city. It could have been Paris, it could have been Prague, for all she knew. ‘The Manuscript,’ she read aloud. ‘Never heard of it.’

  Liam read the strapline. ‘The greatest code in history has just been broken.’ He looked at the top of the poster. ‘So, who’s Leonardo DiCaprio?’

  Maddy waved the question aside. ‘Sal, you sure about this?’

  ‘I felt something … and this shouldn’t be here.’ She nodded, tapping the poster. ‘Unless it gets taken down before Tuesday.’

  ‘But why would they?’ Maddy checked the date. The movie wasn’t out until 15 October, just over a month from now. ‘They run these posters right up until release week.’ She turned to the others. ‘Anyway, I’ve never heard of this movie. And I’m pretty sure Leonardo’s never been in a – a chase-y, spy movie like this. I’ll give this a look-up when we get back.’

  Becks nodded firmly, an untidy tress of dark hair flopping across her face. ‘This isn’t right.’

  He watched them go, picking up their pace as they strode purposefully across Times Square.

  Don’t lose them. Whatever you do, don’t lose them.

  He matched their pace, weaving between the stop-start yellow cabs and ignoring the insults hurled out of the drivers’ windows at him.

  Don’t lose them … not now, not after all this time.

  He only recognized two of them: the girl with the glasses and the frizzy hair, and the tall athletic girl with long dark hair. The other two seemed to be friends. Close friends by the look of their body language. And they’d stopped and been studying a poster for the movie, hadn’t they?

  The movie, The Manuscript, was just another Hollywood cop-out: a cheesy chase movie with big explosions and stupid slow-motion gunfights and the obligatory baddy with an English accent.

  They were heading down Broadway now, the three girls and the boy, passing by a noisy gaggle of middle-aged women – tourists by the look of them. He lost sight of them for a moment and began to panic.

  Don’t lose them, whatever you do!

  He caught sight of the tall girl with the dark hair again, striding like an athlete on platform heels that added another half a dozen unnecessary inches to her height. He gasped with relief as the other three emerged through the tangle of women. He decided to close the gap on them, unwilling to risk losing them because a pedestrian light went against him, or they’d turned a corner and took a side street before he could re-establish a visual.

  Too long he’d been waiting to see them again. Way too long to lose them now.

  CHAPTER 6

  2001, New York

  Just as Maddy had promised, the archway was there as they’d left it, and not empty and disused nor occupied by alternate versions of themselves giving them grief for causing some weird time paradox.

  She pulled the shutter down once they were all inside. ‘Gonna need a coffee her
e. I think I need a caffeine hit.’

  ‘Affirmative,’ said Becks.

  ‘I’ll go check on Bob,’ said Liam. ‘See how the fella’s coming along.’

  Maddy nodded distractedly as she made her way to the computer station. ‘Now let’s see what’s what,’ she muttered as she sat down in the chair and swivelled round to face the monitors. A dialogue box popped up.

  > Hello, Maddy. How was the musical performance?

  ‘We call it a gig, Bob.’

  > How was the gig?

  ‘It was cool, very cool and I’ll tell you all about it later. Right now I need to hook into the external Internet link and do a search.’

  > Affirmative. External feed active.

  She pulled up the system’s search engine and tapped into their connection with the World Wide Web. ‘What was the name of that movie again?’

  ‘The Manuscript,’ said Sal, taking a seat beside her.

  She pinched her lip. ‘Like I say, never heard of it. And, sheeesh, I love DiCaprio.’

  The search engine spewed out a page of hits, every last one to do with the movie: reviews, good and bad, mostly bad; entertainment news and dedicated film sites all chattering about Leonardo. She picked a website she used to regularly tap into from her bedroom back in 2010, Ain’t-it-Cool-News. She smiled at how primitive it looked back in 2001.

  Good ol’ World Wide Web Version 1.0.

  … directed by Don Rowney, a change of pace and direction for the director who normally does drippy romantic comedies. The Manuscript starts out with an interesting high-concept premise before nose-diving and becoming a pretty dull, dial-it-in chase movie. The first twenty minutes of the film introduce us to what it calls the ‘Most Mysterious Manuscript in History’ – something I thought was a made-up story device until I did my homework: The Voynich Manuscript, apparently a book-length document that first surfaced in the Middle Ages, written entirely in a gibberish language that, to this day, has yet to be successfully deciphered. DiCaprio, still hot from his fresh-faced role in James Cameron’s Titanic, plays Adam Davies, a hacker and cryptolinguist – a code-breaker – who manages to write a piece of software that unlocks the Voynich and foolishly decides to brag about his achievement to family and friends and fellow hackers. But, as is always the case, it isn’t long before the bad guys – the nastiest kind of shady government spooks – come knocking, concerned that Davies’s code-breaking software could be equally successful in unlocking the intelligence community’s deepest and darkest secrets. The movie is based on a supposedly true story culled from the British Press – the real culprit, Adam Lewis, a hacker from England, was written off as an attention-seeking loner after the story appeared in a British newspaper called the Sun back in 1994 …