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.”

Chapter Eighty-five

Chapter Eighty-Five

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.

The question dialed up the wattage on Bug’s grin. “Nope. There are fifty-four separate translations. Persian, Arabic, Pashtun, Farsi, and … wait for it, wait for it … English.”

The change that came over Circe’s face was miraculous. As Rudy watched he could see the weariness drop away, the stress burn itself to nothingness, revealing a refreshed intensity and a predatory glint that was startling and, he had to admit, a bit intimidating. For the first time he could see in her eyes the reflection of her father.