Prime

by Jeremy Robinson

  Zelda’s eyes went wide in disbelief. “Now just a damn minute—”

  “Deal with it.” Keasling kept his gaze on King. “Your new handler wants to brief you, ASAP. Get cleaned up.”

  It didn’t appear to be in Zelda’s nature to “deal with it,” but she refocused her ire on the man chiefly responsible for it. She stalked forward and put a gloved fist against King’s chest. “You don’t own me, and you sure as hell don’t get to just claim me like some prize.”

  King gently pushed her hand away. “Zelda… Sergeant Baker, I think you’re going to like the job I’ve got for you.”

  “I already have a job.”

  “Now you’ve got a better one.” He smiled. “Welcome to Delta.”

  NINETEEN

  There was just enough time for King to towel off the perspiration and get Parker to slap a butterfly suture on the cut under his right eye, before Keasling took him aside for the conference call with the new handler.

  The general handled the introductions…sort of. “I have Jack Sigler—callsign: King—here with me.”

  King didn’t know what to say, so he ventured a vague: “Hello?”

  The voice that issued from the speaker sounded strange. It wasn’t just the normal crackles of squelch or the vagaries of radio transmissions. The voice had been electronically distorted, making it impossible to even begin guessing at the person’s identity. King couldn’t say with certainty whether it was a male or female voice. “King?” The distant unseen person seemed to be savoring the word. “A rather fortuitous choice. You can call me Deep Blue.”

  “Deep Blue?” King could just imagine what Tremblay’s response to that declaration would be—something off-color, no doubt—and the thought brought a smile to his face. King however, correctly recognized the origin of the name. “Like the chess computer?”

  “Exactly. It’s my job to know everything and be one step ahead of our enemies.”

  The auto-tuned and digitally modulated voice could have been the voice of a computer, for all King knew. It was not a very comforting thought. The obvious implication was that this mysterious Deep Blue was going to be playing chess on a grand scale, with King and his new unit as the pawns. He didn’t like the idea of his fate being controlled by some mysterious entity, much less one that might not even be human.

  “Or rather I should say,” Deep Blue continued, “to keep you one step ahead of your enemies.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Operational Detachment Delta was created to give the President the ability to act—or react—rapidly, without having to wade through the mire of politics and command structures. But like everything else in government, it has gradually become a victim of the bureaucracy it was supposed to circumvent. Now, as you have personally witnessed, it has been compromised. The worst part is that we have no idea where this attack came from, much less who can be trusted. It will be General Keasling’s job to root out any bad actors still lurking in the shadows, but last night underscores the importance of having a quick response team—one with virtually unlimited resources—as a surgical option for the President to use as an alternative to the military.”

  “You don’t need to sell me on this, sir.” King wasn’t sure if he was supposed to refer to his handler as ‘sir,’ but when in doubt… “What’s the mission?”

  “First, build your team. From what the General tells me, you’ve already started recruiting.” The electronic distortion made it impossible to tell if Deep Blue was joking.

  “Why me?”

  “I think you already know the answer. Right now, you and your men are above suspicion. Additionally, the fact that you survived last night tells me that you are someone who can beat long odds.”

  “I had a lot of help.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, King. You were thrown into an impossible situation, and you held it together.”

  King wondered if the men who hadn’t made it back would agree with that assessment.

  Deep Blue quickly switched gears. “However, our most pressing need right now is to bring those rogue operators down. Need I add, with extreme prejudice?”

  King thought about what Parker had said earlier, during the first meeting with Keasling. “I think maybe we should be more focused on the question of why this happened, and what it is the enemy wants.”

  “The CIA is working that angle, but gathering intelligence will be an essential part of the mission.”

  “So you don’t have a clue?” It came out with more sarcasm than he intended, but Deep Blue let it slide.

  “It would be dangerous to assume anything at this early stage. It appears that this action was completely unconnected to current military operations, but whoever is behind this was able to coordinate with the insurgents that attacked you last night. We can’t dismiss the possibility that this is a bold new terror plot.”

  “The CIA contractor—Therion—was the target,” King said. “They wanted her for something. She’s a code-breaker; maybe they want her to hack into the Pentagon computers? Steal nuclear launch codes?”

  “Now you understand why we have to act quickly and without full knowledge of our enemy’s goal.” Deep Blue must have sensed King’s earlier concerns, and after a pause, he continued. “You probably think that I’m playing a game with your life, and the lives of your men. Perhaps in a way that’s true, but it’s a game we have to win. In chess, you can never know exactly what your opponent is thinking, but you can draw conclusions from the moves he’s made. But you must never think that you are a pawn to be sacrificed for victory. As soon as I know something, you will know it, and when it comes to operational decisions, you have the final say.”

  In King’s experience, assurances like that came cheaply and were worth even less. He wished he could look the other man in the eye, read the sincerity—or lack thereof—in that promise. “All right, let’s talk about those resources. We know where Rainer is, but that’s about all we know.”

  “I’ve already made contact with Shin Dae-jung—the man currently conducting reconnaissance on the target. With the GPS coordinates he gave me, I’ve tasked a KH-12 satellite to get some real-time satellite imagery. That should give you a better idea of what you’re looking at.”

  For a moment, King thought he misheard. The nation’s network of ‘eyes in the sky’ was controlled by the National Reconnaissance Office, an independent and specialized agency that kept a very tight rein on its product—detailed satellite imagery—and was positively miserly about the satellites themselves. Requests for pictures of a target had to go up one chain of command and down another, a process that could take days and could be very costly in terms of political capital. Actually changing the orbit of a satellite, a procedure that required the craft to use up some of its very limited and irreplaceable fuel supply, was something that almost never happened.

  Deep Blue wasn’t kidding about having unlimited resources.

  Maybe this new team was going to work out after all.

  TWENTY

  The excitement Sasha had felt as she donned the level-four biohazard safety suit in preparation to enter the sealed room where the relic was being kept, climbed to a fever-pitch of elation as she got a chance to actually behold the object—real, tangible evidence that the Voynich code was not a unique occurrence. That was about all that it revealed.

  She was able to touch and interact with the object—albeit with a barrier of latex rubber between her and it, but there was little to be gleaned from such physical contact. She laid her hands upon it, turned it this way and that and then poked experimentally at the strange protrusions that were marked with the distinctive letters of the Voynich alphabet. She could tell that the pegs extended into the larger body of the thing, and deduced that they were something like the keys on a typewriter. That would be consistent with the idea that the device had been a type of encryption machine, but somehow it didn’t feel right. She saw no evidence of gears and wheels inside the thing—the kind of things that would be neces
sary for a rudimentary cipher machine to work. Rather, the hollow body, broken though it was, contained only the remains of a few hollow tubes. The tubes and the wooden body of the thing reminded her of something, but what exactly that was, eluded her.

  What she did know for certain was that eight of the keys contained exact matches to the Voynich script, and that was somewhere to start. She went back to an adjacent office just outside the containment area, shedding her environment suit. Rainer was there and began looking over her shoulder, but he otherwise let her work undisturbed.

  Her laptop contained a complete version of the Voynich manuscript in digital form, along with a program that allowed her to plug in values for the distinctive characters of the mysterious alphabet. She highlighted the eight that were marked on the device. Without any context, they offered absolutely no insight.

  It can’t be a code machine, she decided. If it was, other examples of the code would have shown up. So what did that leave?

  What else has levers like that? Buttons? Keys…

  “A piano has keys!”

  Rainer threw an inquisitive glance her way.

  “It’s a musical instrument,” she said, and she knew with absolute certainty that she was right. The wooden body was similar to a drum or a stringed instrument, hollow with thin curved panels to amplify the sounds. The tubes inside were like the pipes of an organ or a pan flute.

  The Voynich manuscript was a book of music. The mysterious characters that had challenged code breakers for nearly a century were not enciphered letters, but musical notes; each symbol corresponded to a specific tone, a sound frequency.

  Sasha didn’t have a deep aesthetic appreciation for music, but she did recognize its perfection as a mathematical language. If the code was an expression, not of individual letters but of sounds, then there would be a pattern to it.

  There wasn’t enough of the device left to even approximate what specific notes each lever would have created, but the simple knowledge of the artifact’s purpose was enough to get her started.

  She turned to Rainer. “Do you have a broadband Internet connection here? I need access to the Cray at Langley.”

  He shook his head. “That’s not going to happen.”

  She blinked at him in disbelief. “You want this cracked, don’t you?”

  Rainer shrugged indifferently. “I can allow you supervised Internet access, but there’s no way in hell I’m letting you interface with the CIA.”

  For a moment, Sasha couldn’t comprehend the reason for this, but then she remembered that she wasn’t here by choice. The Cray would have allowed her to employ a brute force attack, trying every permutation of the code, a grueling task that would have taken a lifetime using conventional methods, but would require only a few hours or days at the most, for the supercomputer. Denial of access to the agency’s resources meant that she would have to do this the old-fashioned way.

  The idea was not without some appeal to her.

  The subroutines weren’t discriminatory; the computer would treat every permutation as having equal potential, whereas a human cryptanalyst knew how to winnow out the obvious false trails.

  But there were still too many variables.

  She glanced through the window at the artifact—the instrument. If it had been a piano or a flute—something familiar—she would know the expected range of possible sounds, but there was nothing familiar about this device. She knew only its country of origin…

  She turned to Rainer again. “This was found in China? Yunnan Province?”

  “That’s what I was told.”

  That didn’t make any sense. There was nothing in the manuscript that even hinted at a Far Eastern origin; everything—the artwork, the style and the distribution of the text, even the parchment on which it was written—pointed to Europe as the place where the manuscript had been created.

  “I need to know more about where this was found.”

  Rainer stared at her thoughtfully for a moment, and then he produced a cell phone. He dialed it and after a moment, he spoke. “She has some questions about the find.”

  He nodded in response to an unheard reply, then set the phone on the desktop, pushing a button to activate speaker mode.

  The voice of Rainer’s employer—Sasha couldn’t recall if she’d been told his name—sounded tinny as it issued from the mobile device. “What do you wish to know, Ms. Therion?”

  “You said it was in a crypt? Whose crypt? Was there anything else there? Has it been dated?”

  “We think it was the tomb of a Chinese prefect named Guo Kan. Several of the artifacts appear to be war trophies from his campaigns with the Mongol Empire.”

  “Mongol?” Sasha tried to recall what she knew of the Mongolian era. “That would have been…12th century?”

  “A bit later than that. Historical records say that he died in 1277, during the reign of Kublai Khan.”

  Kublai Khan. History had never held much interest for her, but that was a name she knew well. Kublai Khan had ruled most of Asia during the late 13th and early 14th centuries, but he was perhaps best known for being the exotic ruler described in The Travels of Marco Polo.

  Had the Voynich manuscript and the strange musical instrument, which evidently held the key to unlocking its secrets, traveled on the Silk Road from Europe to China? Had the manuscript traveled back again?

  It was another variable, and one that didn’t square with the carbon-dating of the Voynich manuscript to the 1400s, but it would place the device and the Voynich script nearly fifty years ahead of the outbreak of the Black Death.

  “What else did you find? Was there anything that might explain where this artifact originated?”

  There was a sound that might have been a sigh. “Just stick to deciphering the code, Ms. Therion. I’ve already investigated all the other angles.”

  “It’s a musical instrument,” she blurted. “Did you discover that in your investigations?”

  A long silence followed. “A musical instrument, you say? Could it be an organ of some kind?”

  “Yes. A primitive one.”

  “Some of Guo’s writings refer to an ‘urghan’—something he took as spoil from the siege of Baghdad. It’s a Persian word and possibly the root word from which we get the name ‘organ.’”

  Baghdad. Iraq again. The search was bringing her full circle.

  “I need to see everything you have on this urghan. If I am going to crack this code, I need to rebuild the thing.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  “King, this is Irish, over.”

  In the front seat of the rented Ford Galaxy minivan, King keyed his throat mic. “This is King. Send it.”

  “We’re moving out now.”

  King consulted his mental map of the area in which his team would execute the raid—an image that had been burned into his brain during the hours spent planning the op—and visualized Parker’s vehicle concealed a hundred meters or so off the main road, about five miles southeast of the objective. “Roger. Radio checks every half hour. King out.”

  In his mind’s eye, he saw Parker and the two snipers—‘Dark’ Meyers and ‘Race’ Banion—moving like dots across the terrain map. Their job was to rendezvous with Shin Dae-jung and establish over-watch positions around the compound. King would be leading the main assault force up the single road that connected the compound with the main highway.

  He’d felt a twinge of regret at assigning his friend to lead the recon team. He and Parker had been working together for a long time. They were like brothers, and it felt strange to be going into a potentially hairy situation without Parker at his side, especially on a mission like this, where they were practically flying by the seat of their pants. But recon and over-watch was just as important to success as the assault, and there wasn’t anyone he’d rather have watching his back. Besides, it was a foregone conclusion that Parker would be his top NCO in the new team, and this was a chance for his friend to show his abilities as a leader. King had no doubt that Parker was up
to the challenge.

  He was less certain about his own ability to take the reins of command, especially with the motley group crammed into the Galaxy that now sped along the main highway out of Mandalay, traveling east into the deepening dusk. Zelda Baker—who thanks to their ‘sparring match’ now looked like a supermodel on her way to a domestic violence shelter—was at the wheel, a logical choice given her familiarity with the country and its roads. King sensed that she was secretly pleased by the invitation to join the new team, but it was just as obvious that she didn’t yet trust him. She wasn’t happy to have been handed over to him like a trophy of war.

  Behind him, Tremblay chattered away easily, bemoaning the fact that he had been unable to find replacement ammunition for his recently acquired Desert Eagle pistols, and generally throwing out observations about the scenery and one-liners that weren’t nearly as funny as he seemed to believe.

  King liked the solid Delta shooter and his ability to shrug off the uncertain and ever-changing circumstances in which they all now found themselves—that kind of adaptability was essential to special ops, but he wondered if Tremblay was bottling up negative emotions deep inside, hiding the grief at having lost two of his teammates behind a façade of humor. He worried about what might happen if and when that bottle finally overflowed.

  Still, he preferred Tremblay’s near-constant monologue to the implacable silence of the other three men in the van. He’d served with Casey Bellows for over a year, so he was used to the man’s reserved nature, but he couldn’t say the same for the other two: Travis “Silent Bob” Roberts, Tremblay’s teammate from Alpha team, and Erik Somers.

  Somers, in particular, concerned King. Although King had personally witnessed Somers’s extraordinary strength and unwavering dedication in the face of enemy fire, there was something unsettling about the big man. It wasn’t just that he was quiet. Silent Bob was a regular chatterbox next to Somers. There was an intensity to Somers. There was some unspoken passion or rage, smoldering just below the surface, like hot coals under a crust of ash, waiting for a stiff breeze to fan them into a full-blown wildfire.