Assassin's Code

by Jonathan Maberry

  “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 think 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.”

  Lilith seemed unable to speak, but she finally croaked out a question. “And the cipher?”

  “We hit one last hitch. MindReader was able to translate the first page of the Book of Shadows, which is mostly introductions of Sir Guy LaRoque and Ibrahim al-Asiri and their various titles and political affiliations. Typical diplomatic stuff and not of any use to us because we know who they were.”

  “Damn,” growled Violin, and a wave of disappointment began sweeping through the Mothers and Echo Team.

  But Circe was not done. “The code is devious; it changes incrementally. MindReader’s pattern search figured this last part out. On the first page of the Book of Shadows, the mathematical error was exactly as described in the Codex. However, on the second page, the error is doubled, then tripled on the third page, and on and on until you get to page ten, then it resets to the first error. With that last piece, we can now calculate the rate of error and use those errors to create a key to crack the ciphertext.” She took a breath. “The Book of Shadows and the Voynich Manuscript are ours.”

  “Good God,” murmured Church. “This is brilliant work, Circe.”

  “Rudy and Bug did as much as I did,” she said.

  “I will thank you personally when I see you,” he said. “Bug, how soon before MindReader deciphers both books?”

  “Two hours. Because the books are handwritten, and by more than one person, it has to adjust to variations in the way the coded documents were phrased.”

  “Do what you can to speed that up. Call me when you find anything, and I do mean anything.”

  He disconnected the call and stood silent, his jaw tight, mind working. Lilith had the same inward-looking expression. Maybe we all did. No one said anything. This was massive news to Church and the Mothers, but I felt like I was on the fringes of it. Maybe it would help Arklight—with or without the help of the DMS—take down the Red Order and the Tariqa, but that seemed to be tomorrow’s battle. I didn’t see how the translation of old books was going to help us find nukes today.

  Then Church’s cell rang again. Everyone came to point like a pack of retrievers, but it wasn’t Circe. Church listened for a moment and then said, “Very well.”

  He closed the phone and looked at me.

  “That was the president,” he said. “The word is given. The mission is a go.”

  Chapter Ninety-Four

  Arklight Camp

  Outskirts of Tehra
n

  June 16, 3:23 a.m.

  Church stepped out of the warehouse to make a series of phone calls to get this rolling; the first of which was to Aunt Sallie. She was in the big Tactical Operations Center at the Hangar, which made NORAD look like an Internet café.

  Bug called us just as Church rejoined me.

  “I ran down every priest who chose the name of Nicodemus,” said Bug, “and either MindReader is having a senior moment or there is something mucho freaky about the Vatican database.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, there is a pretty tightly managed registry of priests. Names, personal data, photographs, the works. This goes back pretty far, to the point where paper records were stored and later scanned; and back past that to written records. All scanned now into their systems. Worldwide there have been a couple of hundred priests who chose that name, and a few for whom that was their birth name. Now here’s the kicker. About once every generation, call it twenty-five to thirty years, there is a record of another priest taking that name. Always from the same place, Verona in northern Italy. The thing is, we have dates of births and dates of deaths of each priest, but when I cross-referenced this with public records in Italy, they don’t match. In fact, there are no records at all of any of those priests. Either these guys lied when they applied to priest school or whatever it’s called, or there’s a conspiracy to hide the true identities of these guys.”

  “Swell,” I said. “Another mystery. ’Cause I was just thinking that I wasn’t nearly confused enough.”

  “Then buckle up, Joe,” said Bug, “because there’s one more thing that popped up. I added Verona to the general pattern search for this case and guess whose grandfather was born there?”

  “Just tell me, Bug.”

  “The family name is Verrecchia. But that’s not the name he uses now.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “Vox.”

  “Wait—Hugo Vox’s family comes from the same town as Nicodemus?”

  “More than the same town, Joe. Half of the men who adopted Nicodemus as their priest names were born as Verrecchias. Nicodemus and Vox are from the same family.”

  Chapter Ninety-Five

  Private Villa Near Jamshidiyeh Park

  Tehran, Iran

  June 16, 3:24 a.m.

  Vox looked at his watch and smiled. Time to make the first of his calls.

  He took several fast, panting breaths while he punched a speed dial. Charles LaRoque answered on the second ring.

  “Jesus, kid, you got to stop them,” said Vox, putting panic and urgency into his voice in exactly the right amounts.

  “Stop who?”

  “The Tariqa, who the fuck do you think I’m talking about. That whole thing with Rasouli and the flash drive? That was a smokescreen. It was bullshit to get the authorities looking in the wrong direction. And all the time he’s working out a deal with your pet monsters to shove the Agreement right up your ass.”

  “What are you talking about?” LaRoque’s voice was filled with genuine panic.

  “I’m talking about doomsday, you stupid fuck. I warned you—begged you—not to tell Rasouli too much before he took the full oath. He’s not the Murshid and never had any intention of being that. You know what he wants? He wants to put a lot of Christian heads on poles. He doesn’t want to keep the Shadow War going. That’s small potatoes for him. He’s ramping up Iran to be a nuclear power. And he’s got a really goddamn good chance of uniting all of Islam against the West. You Red Order clowns think you’ve been keeping the church alive? Rasouli is going to blow Christianity off the planet with a mushroom cloud and remake the world in the name of Allah.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Hugo,” said LaRoque with a forced laugh. “Even if Rasouli betrays us, he doesn’t have that kind of power. Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons yet.”

  “Iran doesn’t,” Vox said, “but Rasouli does. He arranged to buy decommissioned devices from the black market. The same bombs you tried to buy before 9/11. He has them.”

  “Impossible. We never told him about—”

  “He has an inside track to the whole Red Order. You have no secrets left, Charlie. Rasouli has you by the balls.”

  “No, you’re wrong. No one in the Order would dare—”

  “Don’t you listen? I never said that a Hospitaller betrayed you. What I’m saying is that those bloodsucking dogs you think you have on the leash have been off the leash for a long damn time.”

  “What?” LaRoque asked, but now there was doubt in his voice.

  “Yeah,” said Vox. “Rasouli has made a deal with your devils.”

  Chapter Ninety-Six

  Arklight Camp

  Outskirts of Tehran

  June 16, 3:27 a.m.

  “Vox and Nicodemus are related,” I said. “That’s it, I’m going home.”

  I expected Church to looked rattled by the news, but he stood there, slowly nodding to himself.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Pieces are coming together.”

  “Making what kind of a picture?”

  “I’m not entirely sure yet, but let me ask you this, Captain, do you feel that we’re at war with the Red Order?”

  I thought about it. “Actually, even though this thing is tied to them, I … I really don’t see how. We’re at war with someone.”

  “Are we?”

  “The nukes.”

  “The nukes are in play, but we haven’t yet cracked the logic of their placement. There have been no threats, no demands. Nothing in the case files on the Red Order suggests an anti-American agenda.”

  I thought about it. “Y’know, I kind of have the same feeling about Rasouli. I mean, he kicked this off by giving me the flash drive, but the drive itself is sketchy, and he’s been totally off the radar since it began. Granted, that’s not even a full day yet, but Rasouli feels like a day player. A walk on.”

  Church shook his head. “He’s more important than that, otherwise the flash drive would have been sent anonymously through the mail. No, Rasouli and the Red Order are in this. I’m simply not convinced we’re at war with them.”

  “They sent a Red Knight after me.”

  “Someone sent a knight after the drive. Not the same thing.”

  I grunted. “What about the Sabbatarians?”

  “They’re independents. They hunt the Upierczi, which means they don’t work for the Red Order; and they are fiercely Catholic, which means that they aren’t acting on behalf of Rasouli.”

  “The question, then, is who pointed them at me?”

  “Captain—take yourself out of the equation. They were pointed at the knights, who were in turn pointed at the flash drive. You … got in the way.”

  “Ah. I guess the villains just aren’t that into me.”

  He manfully refused to smile.

  “Okay,” I said, “I’m going to nominate Vox as the bad guy. Who else has ‘criminal mastermind’ on his business cards?”

  “Vox alone?”

  Interesting question. “Nicodemus?”

  Church shrugged. He left to make a few more calls.

  I saw Echo Team standing apart from the activity, looking like a biker gang that had crashed a women’s empowerment meeting. I gestured for them to follow me to the far end of the warehouse.

  “Good job tonight,” I told them. “I was listening and I still never heard you on my six.”

  “Kinda the point,” said Lydia. “Clumsy soldiers don’t get Christmas bonuses.”

  We stood for a moment, each of us looking back at the cluster of Arklight women as they continued arming for war. I saw Violin sliding loaded magazines into slots on a bandolier. She saw me watching and gave me a brief nod that I returned. We turned away at the same moment.

  “Top,” I said, “get back to the other warehouse and get everything ready. Finish modifying our equipment, but don’t use all the garlic. Church will have some kind of transport here soon. As soon I talk to the Big Man again I’ll come back for a missio
n briefing. Everyone eat some food, hit the head, take your vitamins. Finish that special project I gave you earlier from those notes Circe got from that folklore professor. Looks like we’re going to need it. We need to be ready to rock, and who knows how long this will take. Bring as much extra ammunition as you can carry.”

  “Boss,” said Bunny, “what that woman said? That’s all true, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  He shook his head. Bunny was no naïve kid, but this was all a long, long way from Southern California.

  Khalid looked concerned. “There’s a question we need to ask these women here,” he said. “If garlic hurts the vampires, is it safe to use around the … um … what was the word?”

  “Dhampyri.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good question. I’ll ask. In the meantime, let’s hustle.”

  “Hooah,” they said, and I watched them vanish through the back door, silent as ghosts.

  Chapter Ninety-Seven

  Arklight Camp

  Outskirts of Tehran

  June 16, 3:43 a.m.

  As I turned to go find Violin, I saw Church heading quickly toward me.

  “We’re hitting them all, Captain. A coordinated soft infiltration. Everyone is moving in at the same time. Four targets here in the Middle East and the one in Louisiana. I have every DMS and JSOC team not currently assigned to one of the targets on deck. Nuclear response teams are on high alert. We’ll do whatever is possible to do, but we can’t wait any longer.”

  Soft infiltrations meant stealth and nonlethal weapons. Doing just one required extensive planning and training. Doing five? I whistled. “You ever do anything like this before?”

  “No one has. So, we get to write the playbook on it. Your team has to avoid a political incident as well as find the bomb.”

  “You want us to do this on tippy-toes?”

  “Correct. You’ll infil during this evening’s shift change. Once you’re in position, you’ll begin an unobtrusive search for the device. Floor plans and construction blueprints for the refinery were on the flash drive, and Aunt Sallie has mapped out several likely areas for such a device to be hidden. Given its nature, and based upon the image from Rasouli’s phone, we are looking at a basement or subbasement. The construction blueprints of the refinery and the current surveillance layout are close matches, but they’re not exact. There are some postconstruction additions and some things that apparently were never built. Or at least that’s the CIA’s determination. Your map will have anomalies indicated by red dots. Don’t trust the Company’s report. When in doubt get eyes on those anomalies. Abdul will rendezvous with you here and deliver you to the site. He has a workable plan prepared.”