“I like ‘Joseph’ better than ‘Joe.’ ‘Joseph’ is more dignified, more serious than a ‘Joe.’”
“I have to warn you,” I said, “I’m more of a ‘Joe’ personality type.”
“We’ll see.”
“Wait, rewind a second. You called that guy a knight. Knight of what? Round Table? Columbus?”
“No,” she said. “I can’t tell you that without approval.”
“Whose approval?”
She didn’t answer.
“You’re wasting my time, girl,” I said. “I’m going to hang up now and get my ass out of here.”
“You can’t,” she warned. “The knight was dropped off by a car and it keeps circling the block.”
“You’re still watching my hotel?” I asked, not sure if that was a comfort or another layer of worry to stack on top of everything else.
“Yes, and if you go outside they’ll see you. The best thing you can do right now is wait.”
“I don’t want to be here when the cops arrive.”
“I’m monitoring the police channels. No one has reported a thing.”
Which is what I expected, but didn’t say so. “What if they send in another of these knights? Or a whole team of them?”
“I don’t think they will. Its broad daylight and they won’t risk a full-out raid, and they won’t risk a room-by-room search. Especially since they can’t know what happened to the knight who attacked you. They’ll circle for a while and then they’ll break off and fall back to wait for fresh intelligence.”
“You seem to know a lot about them.”
“We know enough.”
“We?” I asked again. “Who’s team are you on? Mossad, MI6?”
“No.”
“AISE?” I asked. With her accent she could easily be with the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna, Italy’s version of the CIA.
“No, and stop trying to guess,” she said. “You won’t.”
Impasse.
“What can you tell me?” I asked, fighting to keep the exasperation out of my voice. “If you’re on my side, Violin, then help me out. What am I facing here? That bastard had incredible strength and fangs. Tell me something that makes sense of that.”
“The knights are extremely dangerous. That’s all I’m prepared to say right now. Just be glad you’re alive.”
“I’m always glad I’m alive. I leap out of bed singing Disney songs. But look, I know a little bit about genetics and I can’t see how gene therapy accounts for his strength. He threw me all over the place and he simply did not have the mass for it. That guy was spooky strong.”
Again she evaded the question. “Be glad he didn’t bite you.”
“I’m also always glad when people don’t bite me.” I checked the trace. It was still running but it was clearly getting nowhere. According to the meter the call was coming from Antarctica, which I somehow doubted. “If I tell you what the knight said to me, will you tell me what he meant?”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Let’s try. The knight asked me to give him what Rasouli gave me.”
“What did Rasouli give you?”
“Indigestion and a feeling like my right hand will never be clean again.”
“You won’t tell me?”
“Maybe later. My question is, why was the knight looking for that. Or, better yet, who sent the knight?”
“I’m not sure, because it doesn’t make much sense for the knight to be working against Rasouli.”
“Do they work for him?”
“No. They work for his allies. That’s why it doesn’t make sense.”
But as she said that her words slowed as if she was suddenly thinking that it did make sense. When I tried to get her to explain, she stonewalled me again. So I came at her from a different angle. “I think he told me your name. Maybe it’s a last name or a call sign, or maybe it’s your organization.”
“He didn’t know my real name.”
“Well, I’m just telling you what the knight told me.”
“What name did he say?” she asked cautiously.
I said, “Arklight.”
She gasped, very high and sharp, and then she took a long time before she spoke. “That’s not my name.”
“Then who-?”
She hung up.
“Damn it.”
It was so frustrating because I wanted more information. I wanted to know about that freak that shook my cookie bag back at the hotel. What the hell was he? How could anyone be that strong? Nothing I know could explain what just happened.
That really and truly scared me. It kept the adrenaline pumping through my system, and my hands still shook.
Ghost whined and rubbed against my leg. His eyes were glassy.
I stripped off my bloody shirt, opened a dryer that had about half-finished its cycle, and stole a white long-sleeved shirt that was damp and a bit too small. The buttons gapped but I could get it closed. My jeans were bloodstained, but there’s just enough of an artsy-cum-punk crowd in the capital to suggest that the red splotches were some kind of statement. Yeah, that statement was “Holy shit, I’m still alive.”
My hair was still dyed black from the police station raid, and I finger-combed it straight back and pulled on a painter’s cap I found that looked like it was a thousand years old. I rolled up my bloody shirt and wrapped it in a bath towel that I also stole from the dryer.
My phone rang again. Her.
“They’re gone,” she said. “It’s safe.”
And she hung up again.
I looked at Ghost. “Women, y’know?”
He whuffed.
Then I opened the back door, saw that the street was clear, and we went out.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
On the Streets
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 10:34 a.m.
I cut through the streets in a random pattern. I used glass storefront windows to check behind me and across the street. I went into stores and out the back, I cut through alleys. If there was a tail I did not see it.
My cell rang and when I saw who it was I ducked into an alley to answer the call. Bug doesn’t speak Persian.
“About frigging time,” I growled into the phone.
“Hello to you, too, man,” said Bug.
“What the hell have you been doing? Playing Halo?”
“No-though the new version of Halo is pretty badass. They got this one level that-”
“My whole body is a lethal weapon, you know,” I said. “I know more ways to kill you than you know how to die. Are you aware of that?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I promise I’ll faint when I take my coffee break. I wanted to get back to you on those books you had me look up. Are you sure you have the correct titles?”
“It’s word of mouth from an unreliable source.”
“I know, Rasouli. King Dickhead of all the world.”
“That’s the one.”
“The thing is, I can’t see how the Saladin Codex can be connected to the nukes or anything related to nuclear science.”
“Why not?”
“Well, it’s a math book that was written in the twelfth century based on an even older book, and I’m no physicist, but I’m pretty sure the whole nuke thing came later than that.”
“Shit.”
“And,” added Bug, “it’s not even a good math book.”
“Meaning?”
“It’s a rewrite of a classic book called Al-Kitab al-mukhtasar fi hisab al-gabr wa’l-muqabala.”
Bug murdered the pronunciation, but I could make out what he meant. “The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing,” I translated.
“Right. It was written by some dude named Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, who was a noted mathematician of his time. Apparently ‘ al-gabr ’ is the original word for algebra, which is what the book is about. One of the earliest books on the subject, or maybe the earliest book on the subject.”
“Algebra,” I mused. �
�Physics is all about math, isn’t it? Physics and nuclear technology are kissing cousins…”
“Well-sure, but this is pretty basic stuff. Nothing that gives us direct insight into nuclear science. I mean, c’mon, I learned this stuff in tenth grade.”
“Okay, what about the Saladin Codex?”
“That was written in 1191 by someone named Ibrahim al-Asiri. He was a diplomat who worked for Saladin.”
“Rasouli mentioned Saladin,” I said, and explained what he’d said.
“Huh,” grunted Bug, unimpressed. “Anyway, al-Asiri was also a mathematician, but apparently not a great one. His book attempted to refute some of the theories from the earlier work. No one was buying it, though, because algebra isn’t a theory. Math is math.”
“Tell that to my tax attorney,” I muttered. “How’s this help us?”
“That’s what I’m saying, Joe, I don’t see how it does. Al-Asiri’s book was largely discredited. At most it’s a footnote in the history of math.”
“If it was dismissed, then why is it even a footnote?”
“Discredited,” Bug corrected, “not dismissed. And it was only that particular book that was discredited, not the author. Al-Asiri was a very important man from a very, very important family. He was second cousin to Saladin and was involved in many of Saladin’s most historically significant treaties during the Crusades.”
“Saladin’s name keeps coming up in this. Rasouli made a point of mentioning it, so maybe there’s a clue there,” I mused. “What about the word ‘Saracen,’ I know that relates, but how exactly?”
Bug tapped some keys. “Easy one. During the time of the Crusades the Europeans called all Muslims Saracens. Later that changed to Mohammadan and then Muslim. Purely a European word choice.”
“Okay. What about the other one? The Book of Shadows?”
“Yeah,” said Bug slowly, “that’s where we go out of the blue and into the black. And by black I mean magic. Or, maybe it’s white magic. What do I know from magic?”
“Magic?”
“Uh-huh. the Book of Shadows is the book of spells for witchcraft.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Serious as a heart attack, Joe. What the hell are you into over there? I mean… is the DMS suddenly at war with the forces of darkness?”
I thought about the freak with the fangs.
“Right now, Bug, I’d believe just about anything. Look-keep digging and get back to me with anything you find.”
I hung up and lingered in the alley for a moment wondering if Bug’s information moved me forward toward understanding or pulled a bag over my head.
“Witches. What do you think?” I asked Ghost.
He lifted his leg and peed on the wall.
“That’s what I figured,” I said.
We kept moving.
Chapter Forty
The Warehouse
Baltimore, Maryland
June 15, 1:48 a.m. EST
“Hey! I got something,” cried Bug as his image popped onto a view screen. His face glowed with excitement.
After signing off with Aunt Sallie, Circe had buried herself in the material from the flash drive, and Rudy had followed her in, picking up the thread of her logic and working with her on the psychological aspects of the case. They looked up from the semicircle of data screens.
“We’re in the middle of something, Bug-” Circe, began, but Bug overrode her.
“I’ve been tearing apart the documents on the flash drive,” he said. “At first there didn’t seem to be anything more than what we already had, but on a whim I matched the volume of data we’ve downloaded against the drive’s storage potential and there was a discrepancy.”
Rudy frowned. “Because some of the files were supposedly destroyed by moisture after Rasouli’s agent swallowed the drive, correct?”
Bug gave him a pitying stare. “Silly mortal. ’Destroyed’ is a relative term. Or, maybe it’s a term people who are a lot less super-genius smart than me use.”
“Bug,” warned Circe quietly.
“Yeah, yeah, okay. There’s more stuff on the drive than was openly indexed, and I’m not talking about real or faked damaged files. I’m talking about stuff that was coded to react like damaged files.”
“You lost me,” admitted Rudy.
“A file name is nothing but a piece of computer language. Zeros and ones, but arranged to create a readable name. When you give a file a name the computer writes that name in computer language, but here someone deliberately coded a few files so that their names appear as ‘read error’ warnings. That way they get hidden among the errors from the damage.”
“Devious,” Rudy agreed. “How many hidden files are there and what is in them?”
“There are ten files in two separate subfolders. One was marked BOS/SC, and I don’t think I have to go too far out on a limb to presume what that stands for.”
“You lost me again,” said Rudy.
“It was part of the verbal intel Ledger got from Rasouli,” explained Bug. “Rasouli made oblique references to two books, the Book of Shadows and the Saladin Codex. BOS/SC. Anyway, when I cracked the files I expected to find complete texts or abstracts, but instead I got nine scanned images saved as pdfs. Very low-res and muddy. The other file is weird. All I could find was a Word doc with two words written in English. ‘Fuzzy math.’ That’s it. I’m running some additional cleanup and deep extraction programs to see if there are other hidden layers, but so far, bubkes.”
“Fuzzy math?” asked Rudy.
Circe grunted. “The Codex is supposed to be questionable commentary on an exact science, right? That says ‘fuzzy math’ to me. Could be some code hidden there. You get anything from the Codex, Bug?”
“Not so far. We don’t actually have a copy of the Codex, so I can’t check to see if there’s anything buried in the text.”
“Damn. Who has one?”
Bug made a face. “There is exactly one copy and it’s in the National Museum in Tehran.”
“Crap,” said Circe. “Any full or partial scans online?”
“Not that I’ve found, but searching all foreign-language databases will take a little longer.”
“What about the other one?” asked Rudy. “The Book of Shadows. Surely I’ve heard of that somewhere…”
Circe nodded. “It’s the book of spells used in Wicca.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” complained Rudy, flapping a hand. “Really? We’ve done zombies, clones, and mutants, now the DMS is squaring off against black magic?”
“Don’t laugh,” said Circe with surprising heat. “And stop being so Catholic for a minute. Wicca isn’t devil worship or black magic. That was all medieval propaganda created to suppress the rise of education among women. And even the concept of ‘black’ magic is completely unconnected to the modern Wicca, which is earthcentric and practiced according to positive energy and harmony with nature.”
Rudy held up his hands, palms out. “Mea culpa.”
Circe gave him a harrumph. “The modern practice is built mostly on a set of traditions created by Gerald Gardner, who first introduced the Book of Shadows to the initiates of his landmark Bricket Wood coven in the 1950s. It eventually became the central text for most of the other branches of the faith, including Alexandrianism and Mohsianism. But… I do have to admit that I don’t see how it could possibly relate at all to nuclear bombs.”
“I don’t think it does,” said Bug, “and the Gardner book probably isn’t the Book of Shadows involved in this case. Rasouli didn’t say anything to Joe about witches. Here, let me put the pdfs up and you tell me if this is Wiccan stuff or not.” He loaded an Adobe program and then opened the nine pdf files, throwing them onto nine smaller screens. Each file was a low-resolution scan of a single page from what looked like an ancient manuscript. Rudy bent forward and frowned at it. There were green and brown paintings of exotic plants that he did not recognize and line after line of writing in a language Rudy could not identify. Two o
f the pages were only text, and one was a complex diagram of the sun, with a face in the center and writing running in circles around the drawing.
“What language is that?” Rudy asked.
“I don’t know,” said Bug. “I just found these, and I wanted to show you before I started the recognition software. And the images are very low-res, so some of it might be hard to-”
Circe gasped. “My God!”
Rudy and Bug stared at her.
“I know what that is,” she said.
Chapter Forty-One
Barrier Safe House
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 10:39 a.m.
The good news was that between the CIA, the DMS, and a few other alphabet agencies, we had safe houses and equipment drops all over Tehran. One agency spook I knew told me that he could hardly walk down the street without seeing someone from the “family.”
“Invisible network my ass,” he added.
So, I went to the closest haven. When Echo Team had first arrived in Tehran we spent half a day at a safe house run by Barrier. It was staffed by two agents, a father and son. The father, Fariel, looked old enough to have been a school chum of Xerxes. His son, Cyrus, was a schoolteacher and probably the most boring person I’ve ever met. The kind of guy who speaks in a nasal monotone and can only talk about what he saw on TV.
Right now, though? I could use normal and boring. That house also had plenty of weapons and equipment. Rearming would go a long way toward chasing off the shakes. If I’d had a good fighting knife this morning then the encounter in my hotel room would have been a whole lot shorter and more satisfying.
At least I think it would have.
The Barrier safe house was a one-stop, two-room little pillbox near a bus stop. Lots of people coming and going all the time, lots of strangers. Good place to hide, right there in the open.
I knocked. There was no special trick. I didn’t have to knock three times then two then wait and knock four times. That was the movies. I knocked, and they answered.
Except that’s not exactly what happened.
As the locked clicked open and the door swung inward, Ghost stiffened and gave a sharp woof. Even dazed as he was he knew that something was wrong.
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