“Don’t laugh,” said Circe with surprising heat. “And stop being so Catholic for a minute. Wicca isn’t devil worship or black magic. That was all medieval propaganda created to suppress the rise of education among women. And even the concept of ‘black’ magic is completely unconnected to the modern Wicca, which is earthcentric and practiced according to positive energy and harmony with nature.”

Rudy held up his hands, palms out. “Mea culpa.”

Circe gave him a harrumph. “The modern practice is built mostly on a set of traditions created by Gerald Gardner, who first introduced the Book of Shadows to the initiates of his landmark Bricket Wood coven in the 1950s. It eventually became the central text for most of the other branches of the faith, including Alexandrianism and Mohsianism. But … I do have to admit that I don’t see how it could possibly relate at all to nuclear bombs.”

“I don’t think it does,” said Bug, “and the Gardner book probably isn’t the Book of Shadows involved in this case. Rasouli didn’t say anything to Joe about witches. Here, let me put the pdfs up and you tell me if this is Wiccan stuff or not.” He loaded an Adobe program and then opened the nine pdf files, throwing them onto nine smaller screens. Each file was a low-resolution scan of a single page from what looked like an ancient manuscript. Rudy bent forward and frowned at it. There were green and brown paintings of exotic plants that he did not recognize and line after line of writing in a language Rudy could not identify. Two of the pages were only text, and one was a complex diagram of the sun, with a face in the center and writing running in circles around the drawing.

“What language is that?” Rudy asked.

“I don’t know,” said Bug. “I just found these, and I wanted to show you before I started the recognition software. And the images are very low-res, so some of it might be hard to—”

Circe gasped. “My God!”

Rudy and Bug stared at her.

“I know what that is,” she said.

Chapter Forty-one

Chapter Forty-One

Barrier Safe House

Tehran, Iran

June 15, 10:39 a.m.

The good news was that between the CIA, the DMS, and a few other alphabet agencies, we had safe houses and equipment drops all over Tehran. One agency spook I knew told me that he could hardly walk down the street without seeing someone from the “family.”

“Invisible network my ass,” he added.