Jonathan Maberry - Assassin's code

As I thought that, an idea skittered across my brain. It was there and gone. My three inner selves-the Cop, the Warrior, and the Civilized Man-all made grabs for it, but we came up dry.

So I went out and retrieved the Sabbatarians’ valise from the back of the vegetable truck, and then laid out the contents. Hammers and stakes to one side. I doubted they would be useful. Ditto the vials of holy water. But the bags of garlic powder and the jars of garlic oil… even touching them coaxed that idea out of its hiding place in the shadows of my brain.

I held a bag of garlic powder in one hand and a jar of oil in the other.

It was the Cop who figured it all out.

But it made the Warrior smile and smile.

Abandoned Warehouse

Outskirts of Tehran

June 16, 1:34 a.m.

I needed to sleep, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Instead I walked the perimeter of the warehouse to make sure it was secure. It was. We could not have been farther from the flow of life here in Tehran if we were on the moon. The night sky was immensely dark and littered with ten trillion cold points of light.

I fished a stick of gum out of a pocket and chewed it, enjoying the mint burn, glad to be rid of the lingering taste of garlic. Ghost came sleepily out of the warehouse and trudged along with me, pausing now and again to leave his mark on useful walls.

I called in for Church but was rerouted to Aunt Sallie. She listened to my report without much comment except to make a biting remark about my “letting” Jamsheed get killed.

“You’re a charming lady,” I said. “Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Eat me,” she replied. “Church will be in touch when he wants you to know something. Until then, lay low and try not to get anyone else killed.”

A crushing reply was poised on the tip of my tongue but she hung up on me.

Almost immediately the phone buzzed and I hit the button in hopes of flattening Aunt Sallie with my rejoinder.

“Hello, Joseph.”

I smiled, “Hello, Violin.”

She paused and I strained to hear if there was any background noise, anything that I could use to get a lead on where she was. But there was nothing. Ghost must have heard her voice and he actually wagged his tail. Dog’s a little weird.

“Are you somewhere safe?”

“For now,” I said, though that was only true in the physical sense. Everything inside my head felt like it was a junk pile of hand grenades without their pins and bottles of badly stored chemicals. “Thanks for the help today.”

“I wish I could have warned you, but I found out where you were by following the Sabbatarians. There are teams of them all over Tehran.”

“I’m surprised they can operate so freely.”

“They can’t. There have been a lot of arrests over the years, here and elsewhere. They are charged as spies. The church doesn’t know about them and their own people disown them. Most of them die in prison.”

“Pity,” I said. “Are they really part of the Inquisition?”

“How did you-? Oh. You must have questioned some of them.”

“Only one and he didn’t know much.”

“You’re probably wrong about that. How hard did you try?”

Ouch, I thought. Ghost stood sniffing the wind as if trying to catch Violin’s scent on the breeze. Something caught his attention and he wandered off into the shadows. Probably some interesting jackal poop. Ghost is a scatological connoisseur.

“Since I already know some of it,” I said to Violin, “how about telling me more?”

“Yes,” she said.

It took me a two-count to catch up to that. “What?”

“Yes,” she said. “I think it’s time to tell you what’s going on.”

“First-whoopee, and I mean that sincerely. Second, why the change of heart?”

“It’s… complicated.”

“That seems to be a theme lately. Care to elaborate?”

“I asked my mother.” When I laughed, she said, “I’m not joking.”

“Your mother. Lilith, right?”

“How-? Ah… Mr. Church told you. Good, that will make it easier. She’s here in Tehran and she’s asked me to bring you to her.”

“When?”

“Now. Can you get away for an hour?”

“Maybe,” I said dubiously. “Where are you?”

“Right behind you,” she said.

Abandoned Warehouse

Outskirts of Tehran

June 16, 1:41 a.m.

I spun around and tore my pistol out of its holster.

She was ten feet away and she already had her gun out and up.

Ghost came pelting out of the darkness like a white bullet, but I gave him a hand signal and he stopped thirty feet from Violin’s right flank, uttering a low growl that was full of promises. So much for wagging his tail. I guess that he didn’t like being blindsided any more than I did.

“Drop it,” I said.

“No,” she said, “I don’t think I will.”

We stared at each other.

She smiled first. Small and tentative. Then I felt my mouth twitch.

“On two?” I said.

“Sure.”

I counted it down and when I hit zero we both abruptly tilted our pistols to the sky and took our fingers off the triggers.

We stood there assessing each other, then lowered our guns. Neither of us reholstered them, though.

“Hello, Joseph,” she said.

“Hello, Violin.”

She was both similar and different to the image of her that I had constructed partly from memories distorted by the smoke and thunder of the gun battle at Jamsheed’s and partly from how I’d imagined her since that first call yesterday morning. Lean, fox-faced, with erect posture and the slightly splay-footed stance you see in ballet dancers. The MTAR-21 assault rifle hung from its strap, and she held a Ruger Mark III. 22 caliber pistol down at her side. In many ways she reminded me heartbreakingly of Grace, but she was also very different. Younger, taller, with an air of innocence about her-despite her profession-that Grace did not share. I wondered if they could have been friends.

“Come with me,” she said. “Lilith is waiting.”

“You call your mother by her first name?”

Violin shrugged.

“Is it a code name? Like Violin?”

“Nobody I know uses their real names,” she said, and there was sadness in her eyes.

“I do.”

She nodded. “And I find that so strange.”

The Warehouse

Baltimore, Maryland

June 15, 5:15 p.m. EST

Rudy set the coffee cup down where Circe could see it, but she was too focused to notice or care. Her workstation monitors were filled with multiscreen images from the Voynich manuscript and the Book of Shadows. Images came and went as Circe, sitting rock-still except for the hand controlling the mouse and her darting eyes, studied the arcane pages.

The communicator gave a soft bing-bong and Bug’s face replaced one of the screens. He was grinning.

“Hey, docs… I got some good news. Or, at least I think it’s good news.”

Circe looked up and Rudy could see the lines of stress and worry that were etched into her lovely face. That, and the desperate hope in her eyes, made his heart ache.

“What is it?” she asked.

“MindReader came through again. I had my buddy Aziz help me with some search arguments in a couple of different Persian dialects, and that gave us the edge we needed to slip through the security at the National Museum in Tehran. And guess what we found there?”

Circe’s eyes came fully alive and she half rose from her chair.

“You found it?” she demanded.

“Yes, ma’am,” beamed Bug. “I just uploaded it to the server. A complete copy of the Saladin Codex.”

“Is it in the same ciphertext?” asked Rudy.