The Aztec Code by Stephen Cole

give, then we will take.’ He looked at them both, his eyes like cold stones. ‘Acquiring Cortes’s sword has to be our top priority.’
    Along with getting Tye back again
, Patch willed him to add.
    But Coldhardt’s mind was clearly elsewhere. ‘Con, book the best car you can find for seven o’clock this morning. Oh, and just so you know – Kabacra has warned me that at the first sign of a double-cross we shall be taken and executed by a firing squad in the grounds.’ Coldhardt leaned forwards. ‘It goes without saying, we must play this one
very
carefully.’
    â€˜Play?’ echoed Patch. ‘Sounds like this Kabacra don’t know the meaning of the word.’
    Con looked knowingly at Coldhardt. ‘Then we must teach him – yes?’
    Jonah stared blankly at his PC, eyes stinging, head still hurting like hell. He’d been online for hours, breaking through firewalls and security protocols, trawling through encrypted postings from all kinds of weirdand worrying newsgroups, trying to find some trace of Sixth Sun’s existence. But about all he’d dug up after near-enough twelve hours was some background on the amulet design and a possible reason as to how Sixth Sun came by their name. He felt so guilty, just sitting round while Tye was God-knew-where, so useless and frustrated that he couldn’t find them another lead –
    â€˜Yo, geek!’ came a holler from downstairs. ‘Your nursemaid’s here. Where are you?’
    â€˜Mot?’ Jonah jumped up from his chair and gasped as the world rocked about him. The back of his head hurt so much he felt sick. He sat down on the bed before he
fell
down.
    â€˜Hey.’ Motti was standing in the doorway dressed in washed-out black, a distressed
Punisher
logo screaming from his T-shirt, a smudge of stubble infringing on his goatee. He seemed concerned, and Jonah felt pathetically grateful that he should care. ‘You look dog rough, man.’
    â€˜I know.’ It all spilled out of him, everything that had happened last night. The only stuff he skipped was the close-call-clinch with Tye and the mysterious vault in the wine cellar. Motti listened in silence, nodding from time to time, his face grave.
    â€˜I let Sixth Sun take her, Mot,’ Jonah finished hoarsely. ‘I screwed up. Maybe if you or Con had been here –’
    â€˜C’mon. You think I didn’t spend the whole of the flight over here blaming myself for them getting past security?’ Motti sat down in the chair. ‘I got scanners, I got motion sensors, I got microwaves … I got goddamnedCanada geese with spy cams wrapped round their beaks –’
    â€˜You do?’
    â€˜Well, no, but I thought about it. Look, geek, it ain’t no good blaming ourselves.’ He snorted. ‘So let’s blame Coldhardt instead. There’s more than five hundred acres to police here, man, including a goddamned river. And does he let me supervise the security installations? No, he’s gotta get contractors in …’
    Jonah thought of the vault hidden down in the wine cellar.
Tye was right
, he thought,
he didn’t want you to see
. And for now, Jonah decided to keep quiet about it – he had to be in enough trouble with Coldhardt already.
    â€˜Could the contractors have sold the details of security here to Sixth Sun?’ he wondered.
    â€˜Con wiped their memories with her hypnotism act. They won’t remember jack about this place.’ Motti shook his head bitterly. ‘Nah, Sixth Sun musta had the place under surveillance for some time. We were here, what, four days before Coldhardt sent us off to Guatemala. That ain’t long enough to test all the sensors, the alarms, the infra-red …’
    â€˜So they’d have known the place wasn’t totally secure yet,’ Jonah realised. ‘But how’d they find out Coldhardt was setting up here at all? And why take