He spied the Fortuner, a red smudge that appeared for just an instant on the black ribbon of highway heading out of Pyin, and then it vanished over the horizon. With the throttle wide open, he blasted through the town. He continued along the highway, scanning the road ahead for another glimpse, but the Toyota was gone.
Damn it, where did they go?
He felt a growing sense of apprehension. He was a realist—sometimes, shit happened, and that was just the way it was—but he was also a soldier, taught to live by the simple, if simplistic slogan: “failure is not an option.”
His failure was not in his inability to match pace with the Toyota, but rather in choosing the motorcycle for the pursuit. In the urban environs of Mandalay, it was perfect for shadowing someone. How could he have known that the target would go for a drive in the country?
He was scanning the highway ahead so intently that he completely missed the narrow dirt road that veered off to the south. He did notice a cloud of dust settling, but he was half a mile down the road before it clicked.
Dust cloud.
They turned off.
He geared down, resisting the urge to squeeze the brakes. At seventy miles per hour, that was a good way to lose control, and he had no desire to end up smeared across a stretch of Burmese blacktop. Instead, he waited until he was only doing about forty, and then leaned forward and squeezed the front brake.
The front tire left a streak of rubber, but the back end of the Rebel lifted off the ground, the drive wheel spinning free. With a little wiggle of his hips, Shin swung the bike halfway around, pivoting on the front wheel, and as the rear tire touched down, he twisted the handlebars the opposite way and goosed the throttle again, accelerating out of the turnaround.
He felt a surge of excitement that was partly due to the realization that he hadn’t lost the Toyota after all, but mostly because of having pulled off a near perfect “stoppie.”
Too bad there’d been no one around to see it.
He raced back down the highway, and this time he had no difficulty spotting the dirt track. He also saw that the road was blocked by a metal gate. An old Bamar man wearing what looked like military fatigues, stood at the gate and watched Shin approach with unveiled distrust.
Shin weighed his options as he turned toward the gated road and brought the motorcycle to a stop a few feet away from the old man. He was a park ranger, Shin decided, or at least he was meant to look like one.
Putting on his most sincere smile, he addressed the man in Mandarin Chinese. “Is this the entrance to the botanical gardens?”
The old man blinked at him and then tried his best to reply in the same language. “No Chinese speak. Go away.”
Though conversationally fluent in the Burmese language, Shin was trying to pass himself off as a misguided traveler. Chinese visitors were about the only tourists who came to Burma, and some parts of the country had as many Chinese inhabitants as Burmese. Shin was Korean, but he doubted the Bamar man would be able to make the distinction.
“English?” Burma had been a British colony until 1947; the old guy might even remember the Colonial era.
The man nodded, but remained wary.
“I looking for gardens,” Shin continued in his best attempt at broken English.
The man pointed back down the highway. His own command of English was passably good. “The gardens are that way, five kilometers.”
Shin knew he was reaching his limit of questions, but he thought he could get away with one more. “What this place?”
“It is a wildlife refuge. No one is allowed inside.”
“Wildlife? What kind? Good for pictures?”
“Buru,” the man answered.
“Buru?”
The man nodded as if the question somehow signified Shin’s comprehension. “Nagas. Very dangerous. No pictures.”
Well that clears it right up. First buru and now nagas?
Shin knew of an ethnic group called the Naga that lived in the northwestern region of the country, but he didn’t think the old man was talking about them. Naga was also the name of a serpentine demon in Hindu and Buddhist mythology. The term was also sometimes translated as ‘dragon,’ which didn’t make much sense either. Maybe it was a spooky story concocted by the government or someone else with a desire to keep people off this road. Regardless, it was time to be moving on.
He thanked the old man and pulled back onto the highway. This time, he kept his speed to a nice safe forty mph, and as soon as he was out of the gatekeeper’s line of sight, he let go of the throttle altogether. He coasted the bike off the road and parked it in a stand of trees.
He shrugged out of his backpack and dug inside to retrieve his Garmin GPS unit and a paper map of the country. Neither showed the dirt road, much less indicated a wildlife refuge, but the map did show both the curves of the highway and the course of several rivers and streams that meandered through the valleys between the plateaus. He quickly plotted a course into the GPS that would eventually cross the dirt road—well away from the old man standing guard at the gate—and entered the waypoints into the device.
In addition to the navigations aids, his backpack contained what he had come to think of as essential equipment for any mission. There was enough gear to set up a hooch—a rainproof poncho and a quilted poncho liner, and some elastic bungee cords. There was food—a couple of granola bars, two MREs, a liter bottle of water and some iodine tablets for field-expedient purification if the need should arise, and it was looking like it might. What he didn’t have was a weapon, at least not in the backpack.
After checking to make sure no one was around to observe him, he wiggled the motorcycle’s seat cushion until it came free, revealing a hollow space underneath, which contained a few items of gear that he preferred not to have to explain at a police checkpoint: a SIG-Sauer 9 mm pistol, two fifteen-round magazines, a small set of binoculars and a PVS-14 night vision monocular. He loaded a magazine into the pistol and slipped it into his waistband, at the small of his back. The spare magazines went into a pocket and the PVS-14 went into the backpack.
The idea of the cross-country trek didn’t bother him in the least. Though he didn’t know exactly how far he would have to travel, he had a feeling he would catch up to the Toyota—and discover its occupants’ final destination—before nightfall. Dirt roads were difficult to travel, especially in this region, which was plagued by seasonal monsoon rains. It might take hours to negotiate the crevices and craters created by erosion. The vehicle might not be able to travel much faster than he could run.
But before he set forth, there was one last thing he needed to do.
He took out his phone and dialed a number. It rang once, and then he heard a familiar voice—her voice. “Hello?”
“Giselle, mon cheri. I am so sorry…”
FOURTEEN
4163…
Sasha ran through the factors in her head. She discounted three out of hand; the individual digits did not add up to any multiple of three. Seven? No. Eleven?
She ran through the division. Forty-one minus thirty-three leaves eight…eighty-six minus seventy-seven is nine…ninety-three… No.
Seventeen? Nineteen? Twenty-three?
Yes… Twenty-three from forty-one leaves eighteen, for one hundred-eighty-six. Eight times twenty-three is one-eighty-four…which leaves two…twenty-three!
4167…
The digits added up to eighteen. Three was a factor. Next.
4169…
Sasha already knew that the number was not a prime—she had memorized the first two thousand prime numbers—but when she was faced with a problem for which the solution was not readily apparent, she would work her way down the number line, testing every number to see if it was prime, a number that was divisible by only itself and one. The activity helped sharpen her mental subroutines and gave her brain a chance to process the problem in the background. Once in a while, the problem might relate to her work—a particularly tricky code that would not yield to a bru
te force attack—but more often than not, the problems that confounded her the most had nothing to do with codes or numbers or anything that could be expressed in the precise language of mathematics. Instead, her consternation arose from the chaos of human interactions. She would use the technique to stave off boredom, such as when forced to sit in a doctor’s waiting room. She was always punctual, and could never understand why medical professionals could not afford their patients the same courtesy. Other people would read magazines or play games on their cell phones… Sasha worked out the primes.
This situation was a lot like waiting at the doctor’s office, except it had gone on now for…how long? Long enough to get to over four thousand.
She knew she should probably be afraid. Rainer had killed Scott Klein, for no reason she could fathom, and it seemed likely enough that he would kill her too, but that prospect did not frighten her nearly as much as the ongoing uncertainty. More than anything else, she hated not understanding what was going on around her.
After leaving the helicopter in Syria, he and the other men had been polite, if a bit abrupt at times. She had not been mistreated at all, aside from the simple fact that she was their prisoner. Rainer had promised that he would explain everything once they arrived at their destination, so with every stop along the way, she had asked him again.
“Not yet,” he had told her as they deplaned in Yangon, and then they had moved through the airport to another concourse to wait for yet another flight. “Soon, everything will make sense. Trust me.”
Rainer seemed to understand that threats of violence were not the way to gain her compliance. He did not seem put out by her repeated inquiries; if anything, he regarded her almost playfully, as if he was in possession of a secret that he was dying to share with her.
Now, as she bounced between the other two men in the back seat of the Toyota, with Rainer in the front passenger seat along with the Chinese man who had met them outside the airport, she sensed the long-awaited answer would come very soon. Speculation about what it might be was almost as frustrating as the waiting.
She was contracted to work for the US government, and as such was privy to matters that were classified as Top Secret, but the men who now held her captive had access to the same materials.
Did they need her to break a code?
That seemed likely enough, and yet why the elaborate deception? Why lure her to Iraq and then subsequently spirit her off to Myanmar, when they could have just abducted her off the streets of Georgetown?
It was a human problem; imprecise and unpredictable. Human variables were too chaotic.
4171…
She was still sifting through the factors when the Toyota crested a hill, revealing a fenced compound with four buildings nestled in a valley between two lushly forested hills. As the Toyota drew near, two men rushed out to open the gate ahead of their arrival. They were wearing civilian clothes, but carried guns—maybe they were AK-47s, she really didn’t know for sure. She thought it might be some kind of paramilitary base, but it looked almost like a school yard; there was even a rickety looking playground in one corner of the compound.
They got out in front of one of the buildings and Rainer escorted her inside. This, at last, had to be their ultimate destination, and now he would tell her the reason for his actions. But Rainer offered no explanation. Instead, he motioned to a row of cheap, molded plastic chairs that lined the wall near the entrance, and then disappeared down a hallway, leaving her alone.
For a fleeting moment, she thought about simply getting up and leaving; it wasn’t like she was handcuffed to the chair. She could hide somewhere, bide her time and wait for an opportunity to sneak out of the compound…stowaway in one of the cars in the parking lot perhaps.
No. Too many unknowns, too much uncertainty.
Rainer returned a moment later, accompanied by a tall, handsome man. Although she seldom paid attention to the latest fashion, Sasha thought his clothes looked expensive. He smelled amazing too.
The man greeted her with a smile. “Ms. Therion, is it? A pleasure to meet you at last.”
Sasha didn’t know exactly how to respond. She couldn’t read facial expressions very well; smiles were just another unpredictable human variable. “Who are you?”
The man glanced sidelong at Rainer. “She doesn’t know?”
The turncoat Delta operator shook his head. “I didn’t tell her anything.”
“Well, it’s not that important.” The man flashed his smile again. “You’re not here to see me, after all.”
“I don’t know why I’m here.”
“You are here because I have a problem. You see, I’m used to getting what I want. It’s one of the perquisites of having more money than God. When I am confronted with a problem that I can’t solve, I bring in the very best people to solve it for me. That is why you are here.”
“Are you…offering me a job?”
He threw back his head and laughed. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
She was dumbfounded.
“This would be easier if I just showed you. Please come with me.” He beckoned to her, and even though she had decided that she wasn’t going to trust him, there seemed no alternative but to go along with him.
He guided her to a bleak-looking conference room. The chairs were the same as those in the lobby, and the table looked like something from a school cafeteria. He seemed to sense her train of thought. “I hope you’ll forgive the rather austere appointments. I usually spare no expense when it comes to decorating, but the secretive nature of our work here meant that I had to make do with what was available. But here, this is what I want you to see.”
He held up a small plastic rod, which she immediately recognized as a thumb drive. As if on cue, one of Rainer’s cohorts stepped into the room and set a laptop computer down on the table—her laptop computer, which she had not seen since setting out on the ill-fated raid more than twenty four hours previously. The man opened the hinged screen and tapped the power button.
After the device booted up, her host plugged the thumb drive into the USB port. Understanding what was expected of her, Sasha entered her password to unlock the computer and then opened the directory for the portable memory stick. The folder contained several image files.
“Try the ‘slide show’ option,” her host suggested.
She did, and after a few seconds the screen went black as the first image loaded. It was a photo, but of what exactly, she couldn’t tell. Misshapen and irregular, blackened and corroded, it looked like something recovered from a fire. The image changed, showing it from a different angle, but the mystery of what it was remained unresolved.
Except she did recognize something.
She moved her face closer to the screen, peering intently at something that protruded from the object. She couldn’t guess what its function was, but there was a symbol on it, a single character that she instantly recognized. Before she could process the information, the image changed again, and as if anticipating her desires, the next image was a close-up of the symbol:
“That’s the script from the Voynich manuscript!”
Her host smiled. “Yes, it is.”
She felt closer to an understanding of what was going on, but there were still too many unknowns. “Did the Iraqis find something that can decode the manuscript?”
“Oh, good heavens, no. And if they did, they wouldn’t know what to make of it. I’m afraid the ruse in Iraq was necessary to draw you out into the open. You see, I knew the CIA would be very interested in any discovery relating to the world’s most famous unsolved code…interested enough to send their best person out to investigate, though I had no idea who that person would be. There are many so-called ‘experts’ with pet theories about the Voynich code, but I needed the very best.”
There was an infallible logic to the answer, and that appealed to Sasha, but it hardly justified what had been done to her. “You had all those people killed, just so you could get me here?”
&n
bsp; Her host glanced nervously at Rainer, but then his expression hardened. “Maybe I haven’t made myself clear to you, Ms. Therion. I get what I want, no matter the cost.”
She swallowed. “I understand.”
“Good.” He put his hands on his hips and looked around the room as if to collect his thoughts.
“So what do you want? From me, I mean.”
The man gestured again at the computer. “The object in those photographs was discovered last year in a crypt in the Yunnan Province of China—just a few hundred miles from here, actually. As you can see, the artifact has markings on it that are identical to those found in the Voynich manuscript. It’s badly damaged of course, but there are eight definite matches, and another fourteen probable matches, to Voynich script. I’m sure you, of all people, understand how significant that is.”
She stared at the computer screen as it continued to cycle through the images of the strange object. “What exactly is it?”
“That is one of the questions I am hoping that you will be able to answer. Our best theory is that it is an antique code machine.”
Sasha pondered that. The existence of a machine designed to facilitate enciphering or deciphering was not beyond the realm of possibility, but it seemed unlikely in this instance for the simple reason that the Voynich script remained so unique. If it had been produced using a machine, then surely other documents would have been found utilizing the elaborate—and still impossible to decrypt—substitution alphabet.
More unknowns.
Then she realized that the function of the device didn’t matter nearly as much as the simple fact of its existence. It was tangible proof that the Voynich manuscript could be deciphered…it was meant to be deciphered.
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