Assassin's code jl-4

by Jonathan Maberry

  Smith must have sensed him watching and turned slightly toward Top. He touched his left thumb to the tear glistening in his eye then reached out and smeared the wetness along the barrel of his rifle. He said nothing, did nothing else. It was a statement and he let Top interpret according to his own understanding.

  Top nodded.

  Maybe he did understand.

  Chapter Ninety

  Abandoned Warehouse

  Tehran, Iran

  June 16, 2:32 a.m.

  “Do you understand now?” asked Violin, her voice quiet in the pin-drop silence. “Why I had to be careful? Why I couldn’t just-”

  “Yes,” I said hoarsely. “I understand.” Though I wished I could tear that knowledge from my mind. I looked at Church. He nodded, his face uncharacteristically sad.

  He patted me on the shoulder. “I knew a fraction of this,” he said. “If I had known more… well, the Red Order and the Upierczi would have been more squarely on the DMS radar a long time ago.”

  “We’re going to do something about this,” I demanded. “Right?”

  Church gave me a fraction of an arctic smile. “What would your guess be?”

  In my earbud I heard several of my team softly growl, “Hooah.”

  Church turned to Lilith. “You should have told me this a long time ago,” he said, but his tone was gentle.

  “It wasn’t your fight,” she said.

  Church grunted softly. “Of course it is.”

  Violin looked at me. “Joseph, you and your soldiers, you fight against madmen and terrorists to defend the world and a certain way of life, but your fight is a new one. There are older struggles.”

  “Yeah,” I said bitterly. “Believe me when I tell you that you’ve made your point.”

  She nodded and gave me a small smile that seemed to hold a thousand different meanings. Grace had a smile like that, and for just a moment I thought I heard Grace’s sweet voice whisper my name.

  I closed my eyes for a moment. Then I inhaled through my nose and let out a big chestful of air. “Okay,” I said, “I think I have almost all the players except one. Who or what is Arklight?”

  “Arklight was formed as the militant arm of the Mothers,” said Violin, and her eyes were fierce with pride. “Most of the field agents are their children.”

  “Dhampyri?” I asked, almost afraid to use the word.

  Violin paused for a moment, then nodded. “We are dedicated to the destruction of the Holy Agreement, the Red Order, the Tariqa and the Upierczi. We are the children of monsters, and many of us are the mothers of monsters… but we are not monsters. In comic books and movies dhampyr have super powers. We don’t. Though, there are some useful qualities, I suppose. A few ‘gifts.’ Perhaps ‘side-effects’ is more medically correct. From the Upierczi blood in our veins we have some physical advantages.”

  “Speed and strength?” I ventured.

  “Some,” said Violin, though she smiled when she said it, allowing me to infer what I could from that.

  “What about the age thing. Are you immortal, too? Or-what passes for immortal?”

  Lilith shrugged. “Some of us are pretty well-preserved for our ages.”

  And I saw a twinkle in her eye that made me wonder just how old she was. And… how old Violin was.

  Church consulted his watch. “The president should be calling me any time now. We have to make some decisions, the first of which is whether we continue to work our separate and counter-productive agendas, or whether we combine our resources. The Red Order and the Upierczi are clearly tied to our hunt for the nukes. That makes it everyone’s fight.”

  Lilith glanced around at the other Mothers. Some were stone-faced, a few still openly hostile, but most of them had predatory gleams in their eyes. Some of them even smiled. Kind of the way the big hunting cats smile. You don’t want to see that smile coming at you out of the dark.

  The older women in the group nodded to Lilith, one by one, and she in turn nodded to Church. Some of the tension seemed to go out of his big shoulders.

  “Then let’s go to work,” he said.

  Chapter Ninety-One

  Private Villa Near Jamshidiyeh Park

  Tehran, Iran

  June 16, 2:39 a.m.

  Hugo Vox punched the wall.

  He punched it for two reasons. The simplest was that it was the handiest wall, right there next to his desk. The other reason was far less obvious, even to him. It was a reason rooted in fear and hope, and that reason had a name.

  Upier 531.

  The wall was smooth, with painted drywall over lath. In his youth, Vox could have put his fist through a wall like that all the way to the elbow. He’d done it in college and in at least two boardrooms. Since the cancer took hold, his rage had not manifested in outbursts of that kind. Energy was to be conserved, and he feared the frailty which had transformed him from a robust bear to a tottering old man with bones of matchwood.

  All of that, though, was yesterday’s news.

  When he woke up after a midnight nap, his whole body was on fire. Not with pain… not the gnawing, destructive pain. No, this was something else entirely. This was a swollen pain, and expanded pain. When he’d gotten out of bed he’d actually yelled. Not from hurt, but from the sheer joy of having enough breath to do it.

  Here in the office he’d spent the rest of the predawn hours working at his computer, his fingers flying over the keys. Playing. Twisting things for the sheer nasty joy of it. The fuck you fun of it. It felt like playing chess against an opponent who was bound and gagged. He moved all the pieces around on both sides. The Red Order, the Sabbatarians, the Tariqa, the Upierczi, Arklight. And Church.

  As Vox thought about his old “friend,” he felt his mouth begin to turn down into its usual frown, but the burn wouldn’t let that happen. Instead his mouth twitched and rebelled and broke into a grin. A big, happy, malicious grin. The old bear’s grin.

  He launched himself from his chair and slammed his fist into the wall.

  All the way to the elbow.

  “Fuck yeah!” he roared, and with a grunt he tore his arm free. The splintered lath tried to claw at his skin, but even though it drew blood it could no more stop him than the cancer could. Not anymore.

  Not any fucking more.

  He roared again and laughed, and punched the wall again and again.

  Then he poured a huge glass of Scotch, gulped it down, and flung himself back into his chair. The computer was still on and he scrolled through his list of names, considering each player and the general chaos in which they all floated. All of them searching for meaning, fighting for it, killing for it, dying for it.

  And not one of them-not even Church-appreciating that chaos was its own end. Chaos was its own formless agenda.

  “Fuck you, Deacon!” he bellowed and pounded his fist on the table hard enough to make his whiskey bottle dance.

  His phone rang and he frowned at it.

  There was no screen display at all. Not even one to tell him that it was a blocked call. Vox smiled and picked it up.

  “Hello, Uncle.”

  “Hello, Nephew.”

  “I feel fucking great today.”

  “I know. It’s good to have you back.”

  “Back? Hell, I was never like this before. I feel… I feel…”

  “I know. It’s delicious, isn’t it?”

  “Yes it goddamn well is.”

  The caller paused. “Are you ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know there’s no going back?”

  “Shit, don’t try to scare me with burned bridges, Uncle. I’m ready to light the match.”

  They both laughed quietly about that. Vox, perhaps, laughed a little bit louder.

  “Then let it all burn down,” said Father Nicodemus.

  Chapter Ninety-Two

  Arklight Camp

  Outskirts of Tehran

  June 16, 3:04 a.m.

  We had a quick strategy session during which Lilith told C
hurch that he could have Arklight teams to assist with the refinery raids. He accepted without hesitation. While they began working out the details, I moved outside, needing some space to process everything.

  Violin found me in the shadows outside of the warehouse. We stood together looking at the stars. Then she said, “This must be so hard for you. So strange. You, an American soldier… fighting monsters.”

  “Since I joined the DMS last year, nothing has been normal. I’m not sure I even believe in that concept anymore.”

  “This is normal for me,” she said. “This is all I’ve ever known. I was born into this world.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No. It is what it is. Perhaps someday I’ll find another kind of normal.”

  “Maybe I can help you look.”

  “Maybe you could.”

  “About the Sabbatarians,” I said. “You guys seem to hate each other worse than the Dodgers and the Giants. But you’re both kind of on the same side, right? So what gives?”

  “‘Same side’?” she snorted. “Hardly. They know that most of us were either breeding stock for the Upierczi or born from those forced matings. The Sabbatarians, in their great Christian mercy, consider us Satan’s whores. The dhampyri doubly so.”

  “Jesus.”

  “They long ago named us enemies of God and marked us for extermination.” She shrugged. “We have responded in kind.”

  “Then I’m glad we put a bunch of those assholes down.”

  Violin nodded but said nothing.

  Above, the Milky Way pivoted around us.

  “You know, one of the things that’s eating at me here,” I admitted, “is Nicodemus. Who the hell is he?”

  A haunted look flashed through Violin’s eyes. “As long as there has been a Red Order there has been a Father Nicodemus associated with it. My mother thinks it is the same man, but I don’t believe that. I don’t believe in ghosts or demons; I think it’s part of the propaganda the Red Order has always used. Besides, it’s probably a title passed down from one person to another, much in the same way that ‘Scriptor’ is passed down through the LaRoques.”

  “Don’t priests sometimes take new names when they take holy orders?” I asked. “Biblical names?”

  “Not as frequently these days,” said Violin, “but yes.”

  I pulled my cell and called Bug and told him to hack the Vatican or whoever certifies priests. “If these Nicodemus guys are legitimate clerics,” I told him, “then there should be records in the registry of holy orders. Find out.”

  I slipped the cell back into my pocket.

  “Nicodemus is a strange man,” said Violin. “I saw him a few times when I was a little girl down in the Shadow Kingdom.” She cut me a look. “That’s what they call it.”

  “Yes, very dramatic,” I said sourly. “Can you give me a physical description of Nicodemus?” She did, and I felt my skin crawl. “Okay, that’s a step over the line into weirdsville. That description exactly matches the inmate.”

  “What happened to him?” asked Violin.

  “He disappeared.”

  “How did he escape?”

  “I didn’t say he escaped,” I said. “He vanished from his cell. No evidence at all of a jailbreak. Security cameras went haywire, guards saw nothing, and then he dropped completely off the radar. I was there when it happened. Thoroughly creepy and borderline impossible the way it happened. But even so, it couldn’t be the same man. Could it?”

  Before she could reply Church appeared in the doorway and snapped his fingers for us, and we hurried over. Lilith was with him. “Circe,” he said into the phone, “you’re on speaker. Repeat what you just told me.”

  “When Rasouli gave the flash drive to Joe, he mentioned the Book of Shadows. When Lilith sent us her scan she included a note saying that Arklight believes that the Book is the secret history of the Red Order and the Holy Agreement. It’s in ciphertext, however, and it’s unreadable. Arklight had it for years and couldn’t crack it. The same ciphertext is used in a book called the Voynich manuscript, which is in a library at Yale. We now have both complete texts, and the language is the same. With me so far?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer and instead plunged ahead.

  “Rasouli also mentioned the Saladin Codex, which is a text on mathematics. MindReader pulled multiple translations of it and just finished a comparative analysis. The Codex is a work of minor importance and one with a number of flaws. Now, from a distance, we have two unreadable books and one that is readable but seems to be entirely unrelated to this matter.”

  “That’s from a distance,” I said. “How about close up?”

  “Well… Rudy and I may have made a little progress,” continued Circe. “First, you have to understand that ciphertext isn’t a code. It’s mathematical. However, even when using MindReader to analyze the Codex for a key to the cipher we came up dry. But here’s the thing, and this changes everything… this is where the Voynich manuscript comes in.”

  I looked at Church and saw him stiffen. Lilith, too. You could feel the tension crackling all around us.

  “We think the Voynich manuscript was allowed to be found by the Order. It puts it out there so that anyone can find it and read it. Every page is on the Net. They don’t care if the average person finds it-it’s gibberish to them. However, if you have that as a reference, and you have access to the other two books, then you can read them all.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Because,” said Circe, “we found the key to the cipher.”

  “ What? ” demanded Lilith, almost in a shriek.

  “At least we think we’ve found it. Bug is programming it into MindReader right now. He says that we should have a full translation within hours.”

  Lilith shook her head. “We’ve spent years trying to make sense of it, and we have looked at the Codex as well. There is no key to the ciphertext.”

  “There is,” insisted Circe, “and it’s in the Voynich manuscript. Rudy figured it out. Or, he kicked off the line of thinking that’s brought us to this point. He said that we’re overthinking this. You see, if the Book is the history of the Agreement, then the Red Order and the Tariqa want their members to be able to read it. Otherwise… why write it down?”

  “Makes sense,” I said. “How does it help us, though?”

  “Well, we backed up and looked at the issues of translation from the perspective of two ideologies, two cultures who are effectively at war on a permanent basis. They have different customs, different languages, different points of reference on virtually everything… except one. There is one area in which all advanced cultures can agree, language differences aside.”

  I had no idea where she was going with this, but Church and Lilith said it at the same time.

  “Math.”

  “Math,” agreed Circe. “The Voynich manuscript and the Book of Shadows are written in an invented language that has order and structure to it. Therefore it has mathematical predictability as long as anyone who tries to read it has a set of precise, immutable guidelines.”

  “Such as a ciphertext,” I said.

  “Yes. And the third book in our mix, the Saladin Codex is a book on understanding the science and functions of math.”

  Chapter Ninety-Three

  Arklight Camp

  Outskirts of Tehran

  June 16, 3:15 a.m.

  Circe was so excited that her voice bubbled out of the phone. “One of the reasons historians never paid much attention to the Saladin Codex is it was widely regarded as a well-intentioned and fundamentally flawed set of theories about math. The author was so well-respected that the book was given a place of honor in a museum, but it was an open secret that al-Asiri was no true mathematician. Certainly not by the exacting standards of the Muslim world, and let’s remember that they invented algebra.”

  “Is the math in the Codex actually flawed?” I asked.

  “Yes, but now we no longer think that al-Asiri made a mistake. We thi
nk that he made a very precise set of deliberately flawed computations. Thousands of them. And somewhere in those flawed numbers is the key to the ciphertext.”

  “How’s the Voynich book play into it?” asked Church.

  “There are celestial charts and drawings all through that book. We know that algebra and trigonometry are used in celestial charting and navigation. The connection seemed obvious, or so I thought. Anyway, I had Bug use MindReader to plot the positions of the celestial charts in the Voynich manuscript, but we got error after error because the diagrams are wrong. The astrological star patterns in the Voynich book aren’t exactly in the right place. Scholars had dismissed this as the errors often found in old sky maps made before the invention of ultraprecise telescopes.

  “Then Bug had the idea of trying those same calculations based on algebra and trigonometry as it appears in the Codex. Al-Asiri’s calculations have long been decried as bad math. They aren’t. They’re brilliant math, but they’re deliberately flawed math. When we charted the same astrological star patterns using al-Asiri’s skewed mathematics, they matched exactly with the star patterns in the Voynich manuscript.”

  Church and Lilith looked stunned. So did many of the Mothers.

  “Um,” I said, “speaking on behalf of C students in math everywhere, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Joe,” said Circe, “math is an exact science. However if you build a flaw into it, then the flaw becomes an exact flaw and every computation is exactly wrong in the same way.”

  “So what? How does that help us?”

  “If you look at the errors, you have a key to understanding math from a certain perspective. You can actually use al-Asiri’s errors to do proper calculations. That predictability and regularity is a cipher. It’s a key to understanding anything else that is based on the same code. We began applying it to other drawings in the Voynich manuscript. A predictable mathematical sequence is one of the most common replacement ciphers. We applied it to English and got nowhere. We tried French as it was spoken in the twelfth century, and nothing. The same thing with Arabic and Persian. Nothing. Then we thought about commonalities. Charles LaRoque and Ibrahim al-Asiri were diplomats as well as deeply religious men. They were creating an agreement designed to preserve their churches, correct? So, in what language would these men write that agreement? We thought they might have written it in Hebrew, the original language of the Old Testament, but LaRoque was a Christian and al-Asiri was a Muslim, and Hebrew was the language of the Jews. Both men would probably have had some anti-Jewish sentiments. The Bible was often translated into Greek and Aramaic. And Aramaic was the language of diplomacy throughout the Middle East for a thousand years, and virtually all Middle Eastern languages can be traced back to it; and the Aramaic alphabet was eventually adopted for writing the Hebrew language. Formerly, Hebrew had been written using an alphabet closer in form to that of Phoenician. Everything fit. We now know that Aramaic is the language used to write the Holy Agreement.”