The Bloodline Cipher by Stephen Cole Page A

he’d hacked into the global network of RFID receivers.
    â€˜What’s that you’re doing?’
    Jonah looked up to find Maya had come in, watching the screen with interest.
    â€˜A job for Coldhardt.’
    â€˜Obviously.’
    He kept tapping away at the keyboard. ‘This piece of code is designed to worm its way into every airport, library and high-street store that uses the RFID system. The receivers will go on functioning normally,but in addition …’ He paused. ‘In addition they’ll be scanning for the transponder-tag inside the Guan Yin manuscript.’
    Maya frowned. ‘Surely the manuscript was incinerated?’
    â€˜It is just possible Heidel switched the manuscript for something else.’ He looked at her. ‘Suppose there’s no chance Heidel didn’t know about the tags?’
    â€˜No, he was quizzing Blackland about them when –’ Maya broke off for a few moments. ‘Blackland was using a new, advanced tagging system, you see. Tiny, very powerful chips well ahead of anything on the market, carefully concealed within each book.’
    â€˜Well, suppose we might just see what turns up.’ Jonah noticed she was holding a DVD in her hand. ‘Movie?’
    â€˜Guan Yin manuscript.’ She loaded up her DVD containing the high-res scans of the ancient vellum pages. In moments, a pin-sharp image of a single page of parchment appeared on the screen. It was covered in small, neat writing in a language Jonah had never seen before. A scratchy drawing of what could have been a tree occupied one corner, with writing bunched up all around it.
    Jonah looked more closely. ‘Looks like there’s a lot of character repetition …’ He read the file number. ‘Hey, this page is from the final quire of the manuscript, isn’t it? What about the rest of the book?’
    â€˜I always read the end of a book first,’ she protested, pixie-eyes dancing. ‘Don’t you?’
    Jonah gave a definite shake of his head. ‘I start at the beginning.’
    â€˜Well, I’m itching to get to the big finish. Still, if you insist …’
    Jonah watched as she took the mouse and opened up another file. Her manner seemed far less formal now it was just the two of them, as if she felt able to relax a little.
That’s cool
, thought Jonah.
    â€˜This is from an early page of manuscript,’ she announced. ‘Take a close look and tell me what you see …’
    Jonah pushed his long fringe aside, scanned the text on the screen. ‘It’s maybe a different language?’
    â€˜Right.’ She looked impressed. ‘There seem to be two distinct languages used in the book – one for most of the manuscript, the other purely for the appendix – the final twenty-five sheets of the manuscript. See, the characters are repeated more frequently, the words themselves – if they are words – seem far longer …’
    â€˜A verbose cipher, maybe? One which substitutes several ciphertext characters for one plaintext character …’ Jonah looked between the two pages on the screen with some trepidation. ‘I have to say I’ve never seen an alphabet like either of them before.’
    â€˜This manuscript is one of a kind,’ Maya agreed. ‘Some nineteenth-century scholars thought it might be a hoax – just a jumble of made-up letters. But the script flows very smoothly, as if the author understood what they were writing.’
    â€˜And in any case, you said the words and characters are repeated in ways that match the patterns of natural languages.’
    â€˜Which would be next to impossible to fake,’ Maya agreed.
    Jonah paused. ‘I’m enjoying this.’
    Maya looked puzzled. ‘What?’
    â€˜You know … this.’ Jonah felt slightly self-conscious and began to wish he hadn’t started the conversation. ‘Sparking off someone