Yet somehow, this time he’d actually been looking forward to going back to the States, and he wasn’t the only one.
Casey Bellows had seen his newborn son only via webcam. Mark Adams, the old man of the team at thirty-eight, was just two years shy of his twenty, and he had already received approval for transfer to a non-deployable headquarters unit. Even the Boss, Rainer, had made no secret of his plan to leave active duty and start up his own private security firm.
They’d had a good run, but maybe it was time to cash out and enjoy their success, not risk it all on one more throw of the dice.
Stow it, Sigler, he admonished himself. This is what you signed up for.
Sigler focused on Klein.
“Sasha can explain it better,” Klein continued, with a gesture to the woman. Then he hastily added, “Sorry, I skipped the intros. Jack, Danno, this is Sasha Therion. We brought her in to consult on this…”
He paused, as if expecting the woman to engage with the conversation, but she continued to gaze at her computer screen, seemingly hypnotized.
Sigler felt compelled to speak, if only to end the awkward silence. “Brought her in? I thought your new boss put the kibosh on outsourcing.”
It was no secret that Domenick Boucher, the new director of the CIA, under orders from the President, had put an end to the former administration’s practice of outsourcing the detainment, rendition and interrogation of suspected terrorists. It was partly as a way to restore accountability to the relevant agencies and partly to stop the hemorrhage of taxpayer dollars into what some journalists had taken to calling the ‘terror-industrialist complex.’ The President had made other changes too, some public and some under the radar, to streamline the nation’s intelligence-gathering apparatus and repair the lingering damage to America’s public image following too many incidents of abuse, brutality and torture—oft times with official sanction.
The President, a former Army Ranger, was by no means soft on national security issues, but he did have what one primary opponent had disparagingly called ‘an obsolete sense of integrity.’ Old-fashioned maybe, but not obsolete. Evidently the American people had liked the idea of a leader with integrity.
Klein shook his head. “This is different. But, I should let Sasha explain.”
When she failed to pick up the cue a second time, the CIA man laid a hand gently on her forearm, and as if speaking to a young child, he said: “Sasha, why don’t you tell the men about your work?”
The woman looked up suddenly, the spell broken. She glanced around the table as if just realizing that she wasn’t alone. “Uh, I do the math.”
Sigler stifled a laugh, but he noticed that Parker was now sitting up a little straighter. Daniel Parker, a self-confessed science geek, was the antithesis of most African-American stereotypes: a man who would count it a greater honor debating astrophysics with Neil deGrasse Tyson than playing one-on-one with Allen Iverson…though if push came to shove, he would probably acquit himself equally well in either situation.
“Sasha is, among other things, a cryptanalyst,” explained Klein. “We might have stopped outsourcing the dirty work, but we can’t afford to keep people with her talents on the payroll.”
Sigler connected the dots. “So we found some kind of coded message.”
Klein pursed his lips. “Not exactly.”
“This is what you found,” Sasha declared, as if abruptly deciding to take an interest in the conversation. She turned the laptop around and showed them the screen, and the image on it that had so captivated her.
The display showed what Sigler could only assume was a digital copy of one of the documents they had recovered during the previous night’s raid. It didn’t look familiar, but then he hadn’t really been looking when they’d done the collecting. He recognized the delicate curves of Arabic script, but there was a block of writing in the middle that looked like nothing he’d ever seen before. The letters might have been Greek or perhaps Cyrillic, but interspersed among the not-quite-familiar letters were other shapes that looked almost like Chinese characters:
“What does it say?”
“I don’t know,” Sasha replied, looking genuinely bothered by the admission.
The CIA man broke in impatiently. “It’s evident from the accompanying message that the enemy does know what it says, and that it’s critical to the development of a biological weapon.”
Sigler had been in the Unit long enough that such a declaration no longer surprised him. The stakes were always high. America’s enemies were bent on acquiring bio-weapons or loose nukes. It was the Unit’s job—his job—to nip those deadly aspirations in the bud.
“The intel you collected,” Klein continued, “doesn’t tell us what exactly, but it does tell us where: an old Republican Guard depot about thirty klicks northeast of Samarra.”
Sigler reviewed his mental map of the region, but the area didn’t ring any bells. Samarra lay between Baghdad and Tikrit, along the eastern leg of the Sunni Triangle, where nearly all of the insurgent activity had been focused lately. East of the triangle, there was a whole lot of nothing, all the way to the Iranian border.
“We had no idea this place even existed; it doesn’t show up on any of our satellite imagery, going back all the way to the First Gulf War, so we have to assume that it was decommissioned sometime following the end of the war with Iran. We should have a UAV over the site within the hour, but we’re thinking most of it’s underground. Saddam probably buried it to hide it from UN weapons inspectors. That’s probably why we didn’t find it sooner.” Klein shifted forward in his chair.
Here it comes, thought Sigler.
“The window of opportunity on this one is narrow. Once they figure out their couriers got nabbed, if they haven’t already, they’ll pick up and move. We need to hit this place ASAP.” Another pause.
“Tonight.”
Sigler didn’t question the assessment. Klein wasn’t asking for his opinion or advice; the CIA man was telling him to get ready. “I’ll tell the boys.”
“Slow down. There’s more.” He glanced at Sasha. “You’re going to have a ride-along.”
This time, Sigler wasn’t able to hide his dismay. “You’re shitting me, right?” He glanced over at Rainer, but the Boss was stone-faced. “You mean you’ll bring her in once we secure the site?”
Klein shook his head. “Miss Therion needs to be there with you.”
For the first time since her introduction, Sasha seemed to be aware of the discomfort her presence was creating. “The Iraqis know how to crack this code,” she said, tapping the computer screen emphatically. “And we don’t. We don’t even know where to begin. I have to be there. I have to be the first one inside.”
Rainer cleared his throat. “The decision is made, Jack.”
“With all due respect, sir, I would like to say for the record that this is a piss-poor idea.” Sigler hoped that his use of the military honorific—something that was almost never done in the Unit—would convey that this wasn’t just run-of-the-mill bitching and moaning.
Rainer’s reply was succinct. “Deal with it.”
Sigler glanced at Klein, who now seemed to be making a studied effort to avoid meeting his gaze, and then at Sasha. “I don’t suppose you’ve been trained for field work. Can you shoot?”
Before she could answer, Klein spoke up. “Don’t worry about that, Jack. I’ll take care of her. You guys just need to get us through the front door.”
A dozen different retorts flew through Sigler’s mind, but this time he checked himself. He stood up. “I’m going to need that imagery from the drone as soon as you can get it to me. The more I know about the site…” He let the thought trail off; there was nothing to be gained by stating the obvious. He motioned for Parker to follow, but to his surprise, his friend waved him off.
“Actually Jack, I’d like to have a word with Miss Therion.”
For a moment, Sigler wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly, but before he could inquire, Pettit snappe
d: “Parker!”
Usually, a stern look from Cipher element’s top NCO would be enough to put any member of the team in their place—even Sigler, who, as the platoon leader, outranked him. Pettit rarely had to chastise with words, but when he did, everyone sought cover.
Parker, however, didn’t even blink. He pointed at the computer screen and kept his gaze on Sasha. “I know what that is. So, either you can talk to me, one-on-one, and tell me what’s really going on here, or I can walk out that door and tell the rest of the team that we’re about to go put it on the line over an undecipherable medieval manuscript that’s probably a hoax.”
Sigler gaped at him. So did nearly everyone else. Klein swore softly under his breath.
Sasha shook her head. “It’s not a hoax. That much, I’m sure of. And this could be the closest anyone has come to cracking the code in over four hundred years.”
“What the fuck?” growled Pettit, turning to Rainer in disbelief. “Medieval manuscript? Is this shit for real?”
Rainer didn’t respond to his sergeant major. Instead, he stood abruptly and motioned toward the door. “Gentleman, let’s give Danno and Miss Therion a chance to get acquainted.”
THREE
Rainer’s abrupt declaration caught even Parker by surprise, and he didn’t hide his elation very well; he grinned so hard, his jaws started to hurt. As the others filed out of the TOC, Sasha just stared at him in what he guessed was complete disbelief.
Yeah, that’s right, he thought, nodding his head ever so slightly. The black man was the smartest guy in the room. Bet you didn’t see that coming, princess.
“So,” she said, when they were alone. “You know about the manuscript?”
He shrugged, but his irrepressible grin foiled his attempt to appear nonchalant. “Maybe. Or maybe I was just trying to find an excuse to be alone with you.”
She blinked, uncomprehendingly. “Why would you do that?”
That dulled Parker’s smile just a little. This girl wasn’t pretending to be aloof as a way of fending off unwanted advances; this was who she really was. “I’ve dabbled a little in number theory and mathematical codes. I like to do brain teasers. Lateral thinking puzzles, cryptograms…stuff like that. I must have come across an article about it somewhere and it stuck in my head.
“Probably when I was at Yale,” he added with a wink.
That seemed to penetrate her shield of inscrutability. “You went to Yale?”
His only answer was an airy wave. He hadn’t attended Yale as a student, but he had grown up in New Haven, where his father still worked at the University as a janitor. He’d spent a lot of time on the campus while growing up, and he had, for a short while, dared to dream of attending the Ivy League institution. It was a dream that could not withstand the harsh realities of socio-economics and race politics.
His higher education—still a work in progress—had come through distance learning programs, but Sasha didn’t need to know that.
“The article called it ‘the most mysterious manuscript in the world.’ An entire book written in a language that no one has ever seen before, and which no one is able to translate. Not even the NSA. That’s pretty crazy shi…ah, stuff.”
Sasha nodded. “It’s one of the greatest puzzles in cryptology.”
It was officially designated MS 408 of Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, but it was more commonly known as the Voynich manuscript, so named for the early 20th century antique book dealer who brought it into public awareness.
The book’s vellum pages, over two hundred and forty altogether, were decorated with elaborate full-color illustrations, mostly of plants, rendered with extraordinary detail—almost like a biology textbook—which had led many to believe that it was a book of herbal remedies from the Middle Ages. The pages also depicted star charts, along with more symbolic pictures—several of the paintings featured crudely drawn, almost cartoonish images of naked pregnant women, cavorting about in green pools, dancing along the edge of spiral star clusters, or emerging from plant root systems that looked suspiciously like the veins and arteries of a human body. What made the Voynich manuscript remarkable though was its text. The entire book had been written using a completely unknown alphabet system that had confounded all attempts at decipherment.
Theories about its origin were diverse. Some believed it to be the work of an herbalist or apothecary, who had developed the unique code to protect his recipes from competitors. Others believed it to be a hoax—created by a confidence artist during the reign of Queen Elizabeth or perhaps even by Voynich himself in the early 1900s—and opined that the reason the book’s code couldn’t be cracked was that the text had been generated randomly, to make it seem that the book contained some great mystery. Hoax or not, since its appearance in 1912, more than a few people had wasted years of their lives in a vain attempt to solve its riddle.
The mystery of the Voynich manuscript was exactly the sort of puzzle that captivated Parker. He had read numerous articles about the book, staying current on the latest research and theories about its origin, so he had immediately recognized the text excerpt on Sasha’s computer screen. On a personal level, he was intrigued by the admittedly bizarre notion that Iraqi insurgents might be on the verge of cracking the Voynich code. The fact that this beautiful, if somewhat socially awkward cryptanalyst not only shared his interest but was obsessed with finding the solution, made it even more appealing.
But it sure as hell wasn’t a good reason for Cipher element to risk their lives.
He shook his head. “The Voynich manuscript is almost certainly a hoax. The best theory I’ve heard is that it was produced by an English charlatan who claimed, among other things, to be able to turn lead into gold. The reason no one can read it is that there’s nothing there to read; it’s just a jumble of random symbols that don’t mean anything.”
“You are talking about the Edward Kelley hypothesis?” Sasha shook her head. “That has been categorically disproven.”
“Categorically disproven? I wasn’t aware of that.”
“At my request, the agency secretly tested pieces of the manuscript. Carbon-14 dating confirms that the parchment dates to between the 13th and 15th centuries, at least two hundred years before Kelley lived.”
“So it’s old. That proves nothing. Different crook, same scam.”
She pursed her lips. “You could be right. But the documents your team recovered indicate that al-Awda is in the process of decoding it. They believe it will help them create a new bio-weapon.”
Despite his desire to impress her, Parker couldn’t hide his incredulity. “Really? A medieval cookbook is going to tell them that?”
“You must be unfamiliar with the science of ethnopharmacology.” Sasha’s tone was flat, matter of fact, but the statement was a disparaging slap in the face to Parker. “It’s the study of traditional medicines used by different ethnic groups, to discover new drugs and medicines. Traditional knowledge is the basis of modern pharmacology; there’s every reason to believe that the Voynich manuscript might contain important new insights into healing medicines. However, if the information you recovered is accurate, the book might also contain important historical information about the plague.”
That got Parker’s attention.
If the Voynich manuscript did date back to the 1400s, then it wasn’t too much of stretch to believe that it might contain knowledge about the Black Death, which had ravaged Europe less than a century earlier. The plague bacteria had already been used as a bio-weapon; it was widely believed that the first outbreak of the disease in Europe had occurred after an invading Mongol army catapulted infected bodies into the besieged city of Caffa. Seven hundred years later, the organism that had caused the plague—Yersinia pestis—remained a pathogen with deadly potential for exploitation as a germ warfare agent.
Ultimately, it didn’t matter whether the Voynich manuscript really contained information about the plague, or even if it could be decoded at all. Somebod
y was trying to cook up a nasty new weapon, and it was his job—his team’s job—to identify them and put them in the ground.
“That’s good enough for me,” he said, rising to his feet.
Sasha’s face creased in confusion. “You…believe me? Just like that?”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe.” His grin was back, but this time it was a cold smile of anticipation. “I’ve got a job to do. It’s going to be a busy night.”
FOUR
Washington, D.C.
Domenick Boucher waited patiently for the President’s daily national security briefing to conclude. As Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, he’d been the first to speak, providing the Commander-in-Chief with a succinct snapshot of how the world had changed during the previous twenty-four hours. He had then listened attentively as other members of the National Security Council had done the same, but all the while his thoughts never strayed far from the one piece of information he had withheld; he clenched it in his mind, like a hand grenade with the safety pin removed. It was an apt simile. He was about to drop this particular grenade on Tom Duncan’s desk, and the odds were good that neither of them would be able to escape the shitstorm of political shrapnel that would follow.
When the President finally dismissed the meeting, Boucher stood with the rest of the attendees but didn’t join the exit queue. President Duncan settled into the executive chair behind the Resolute Desk and leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Something on your mind, Dom?”
Boucher pursed his lips. “Mr. President…”
“It’s just us, Dom. Spit it out.”
Easier said than done. Boucher wasn’t just the DCIA; he was also Tom Duncan’s friend, and that made this so much harder. He took a single sheet of paper from his leather portfolio and placed it in on the desktop. Duncan ignored it, maintaining eye contact with Boucher, compelling him to speak.
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