“Two hours. Because the books are handwritten, and by more than one person, it has to adjust to variations in the way the coded documents were phrased.”

“Do what you can to speed that up. Call me when you find anything, and I do mean anything.”

He disconnected the call and stood silent, his jaw tight, mind working. Lilith had the same inward-looking expression. Maybe we all did. No one said anything. This was massive news to Church and the Mothers, but I felt like I was on the fringes of it. Maybe it would help Arklight—with or without the help of the DMS—take down the Red Order and the Tariqa, but that seemed to be tomorrow’s battle. I didn’t see how the translation of old books was going to help us find nukes today.

Then Church’s cell rang again. Everyone came to point like a pack of retrievers, but it wasn’t Circe. Church listened for a moment and then said, “Very well.”

He closed the phone and looked at me.

“That was the president,” he said. “The word is given. The mission is a go.”

Chapter Ninety-four

Chapter Ninety-Four

Arklight Camp

Outskirts of Tehran

June 16, 3:23 a.m.

Church stepped out of the warehouse to make a series of phone calls to get this rolling; the first of which was to Aunt Sallie. She was in the big Tactical Operations Center at the Hangar, which made NORAD look like an Internet café.

Bug called us just as Church rejoined me.

“I ran down every priest who chose the name of Nicodemus,” said Bug, “and either MindReader is having a senior moment or there is something mucho freaky about the Vatican database.”

“Why?”

“Well, there is a pretty tightly managed registry of priests. Names, personal data, photographs, the works. This goes back pretty far, to the point where paper records were stored and later scanned; and back past that to written records. All scanned now into their systems. Worldwide there have been a couple of hundred priests who chose that name, and a few for whom that was their birth name. Now here’s the kicker. About once every generation, call it twenty-five to thirty years, there is a record of another priest taking that name. Always from the same place, Verona in northern Italy. The thing is, we have dates of births and dates of deaths of each priest, but when I cross-referenced this with public records in Italy, they don’t match. In fact, there are no records at all of any of those priests. Either these guys lied when they applied to priest school or whatever it’s called, or there’s a conspiracy to hide the true identities of these guys.”

“Swell,” I said. “Another mystery. ’Cause I was just thinking that I wasn’t nearly confused enough.”