King frowned. “Okay, for argument’s sake, let’s say that it’s real. What difference does it make? What are we talking here: lost books of the Bible? Templar treasure maps, or something else? What makes this thing so damned important? What makes it worth killing for?”
Parker took a deep breath. “Remember how I said the manuscript was illustrated? It’s full of detailed drawings, mostly of plants, but other things too, like star charts and animals. The popular theory is that it was a book of herbal or alchemical lore. That would explain why it was coded in the first place; it’s a book of secret recipes, and who ever wrote it didn’t want those recipes falling into the wrong hands.”
King nodded slowly. “Secret recipes. Like the formula for some kind of nerve agent?”
“Or worse.” Parker turned the computer around so that King could see the file he had been looking at. The screen displayed a picture of a badly damaged wooden box with several levers sticking out from the sides. “This was found in a crypt in China. It has markings that are identical to the cipher used in the manuscript. The crypt where they found this thing was hot with a strain of plague bacteria. In fact, the place where they found it might have been ground zero for the Black Death back in the fourteenth century.”
“Okay, now you have my attention.” King pointed at the image. “What is it?”
“It’s a musical instrument, similar to an organ. The code isn’t cipher text. It’s musical notation. That’s why no one has been able to crack it. The letters don’t correspond to any alphabet; they’re musical notes.”
King just stared at him.
“Sasha figured it all out…well, almost. She couldn’t verify any of her historic suppositions because they wouldn’t let her have outside Internet access, but it all checks out.”
Parker tapped the screen again. “This is what started it all. Some kind of primitive pipe organ, found in the crypt of a Chinese general who led the Mongol armies that destroyed Baghdad in 1258; it was a war trophy taken from the House of Wisdom.”
“That was almost a hundred years before the Black Death,” King pointed out. “How could they be connected?”
“Maybe they’re not, but somebody obviously thinks they are. That’s why they want Sasha to decode the manuscript.”
King still didn’t appear convinced. “Back up. You said it’s musical notation. What did you mean by that?”
“Think of it as another layer of code. Each symbol corresponds to a specific musical note — we even use letters to symbolize those, A to G — so music is a form of language. The Voynich notation is obviously more complex, but that could be the difference between octaves or semitones — sharps and flats. I don’t understand it all, but Sasha did. She was in the process of trying to create a virtual copy of the organ when you showed up tonight.”
“Would that have worked?”
“The original was badly damaged. There wasn’t enough of it left to even begin guessing how the symbols and notes corresponded. But Sasha was researching someone named Nasir al-Tusi, a Persian scientist and an advisor to the Mongol ruler. Al-Tusi was the Leonardo Da Vinci of the Islamic world. No, scratch that… He was more like Leonardo and Galileo and Isaac Newton all rolled into one. Based on what Sasha turned up, he’s a good candidate for having been involved in the creation of the manuscript. He was also present at the destruction of Baghdad, and he even managed to save some of the documents from the House of Wisdom. Sasha wanted access to al-Tusi’s writings, to see if the plans for the organ were there somewhere, but she never got a chance.”
King considered this for a moment. “Those documents he saved; where did they go?”
“A place called Maragheh. It was an astronomical observatory, and after the destruction of Baghdad, the last bastion of science and learning in the Islamic world.”
“I don’t suppose it’s still around today?”
“Yes and no. It’s currently undergoing restoration.” Parker clicked a few keys and the picture on the display changed to show an enormous white geodesic dome. “Everything in Sasha’s notes indicates that she expected to find a copy of the plans for the organ in the archives of the Maragheh Observatory. There are thousands of documents there, but hardly any of them have been preserved digitally.”
“So, the only way to get the specs for the organ is to physically visit this observatory.” It was more a statement than a question, but King’s next inquiry wasn’t rhetorical. “The organ is the only way to decode the manuscript?”
Parker nodded.
King’s lips curled into a smile that was both grim and satisfied. “Rainer will have to go to Maragheh. And we’ll be waiting for him.”
“Jack, there’s a problem. Maragheh…”
“Yeah?”
“It’s in Iran.”
King blinked at him. “Oh. I guess that is a problem.”
THIRTY-FIVE
When he finally found a map that showed Maragheh, King’s first thought was that it wasn’t as bad as he’d first thought. The ruins of the ancient astronomical observatory were located in the remote northwestern part of Iran, only about a hundred miles from the borders with Iraq and Turkey, and at least four hundred miles from Tehran.
When he’d showed Keasling, the general had just rubbed his forehead as if the news had given him a migraine. “God damned Iran,” he muttered. “Well, it’s not my call. You’ll have to take it up with your new boss.”
Deep Blue received the news with no discernible reaction whatsoever; one of the advantages to being little more than a disembodied voice was that you could always just hit the ‘mute’ button if you didn’t feel like letting the person at the other end of the line know just how pissed off you were. After a longer than expected pause, Deep Blue said simply: “What do you need?”
King explained his plan for the team to execute a High Altitude, High Opening (HAHO) jump. Unlike the High Altitude, Low Opening jump that Tremblay and Alpha team had used to get on the ground fast by free-falling most of the way and opening the parachutes at almost literally the last second, at HAHO jump required a paratrooper to deploy his chute at around 25,000 feet, and then glide the chute to a drop zone as far as thirty miles away.
“That will get you in unnoticed,” Deep Blue replied, “but you’ll still be a good fifty miles from the objective. Let me see if I can’t come up with a better alternative.”
The mysterious handler didn’t give any details, but directed them to proceed immediately to the airport, where Keasling’s plane would bear them to their next, as yet unrevealed destination. With that, Zelda and Shin packed up what few personal belongings they had accumulated during their time in Mandalay, and buttoned up the safe-house. Forty minutes later, they were in the air, and four hours thereafter, they were on the ground at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan.
A five-ton military transport truck, driven by a pair of US Air Force enlisted personnel, rolled out to meet them on the tarmac. Bagram was a primary entry point for Afghanistan, and over the course of his military career, King had spent more than a few days cooling his heels in transitional housing there while waiting for a connecting flight or ground transport to some remote FOB. This time however, they didn’t leave the flight line. Instead, the truck delivered them to one of several non-descript semi-cylindrical hangar buildings along the perimeter of the airstrip; the only noticeable difference about this particular structure was the fact that it was shrouded in darkness.
With only the beams of the airmen’s flashlights to guide them, they were escorted into the Quonset-hut style hangar and up the boarding ramp of a large aircraft. King suspected it was some kind of stealth plane, but its interior looked more like a cargo transport. When they were all aboard, the ramp closed and the interior space became filled with an escalating whine as the aircraft’s engines started powering up.