‘What do you mean?’
‘The book contains a narrative by a man who claims to have known Mohammad ibn Abdullah.’
‘The Prophet.’ That surprised Miriam. Katsas Shavit had told her that the Iranians might be involved in the mission, but she hadn’t expected this.
‘Yes.’ Lourds picked up his journal. It was covered with Post-its he’d removed from the book. ‘According to Lev’s notes, he’d had the book carbon-dated. It’s fourteen hundred years old.’
Miriam looked at the backpack. ‘How much is it worth?’
‘It’s not a scientific study by any recognized scholar, doesn’t cover anything concrete about scientific thinking or verifiable history, and focuses on a tale that can’t be verified.’ Lourds stopped himself. ‘At least, the story can’t be verified at this moment. I suspect some of it will become quite real.’ He frowned. ‘And that might be unfortunate for many of us.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Instead of answering, Lourds looked back over the notes stuck to his journal. He tapped one of them. ‘Lev was talking to an Iranian professor named Hashem Nabi Namati. He’s a professor at the Central Library of Astan Quds Razavi. Are you familiar with it?’
Miriam thought for a moment, then placed the university. ‘They handle old and rare manuscripts.’
‘Exactly. The university was first established prior to 1457 and holds over a million books focusing on Islamic research. They’ve got over seventy thousand documents in the antiquities section, nearly twenty thousand of those handwritten documents. Much of the collection is over a thousand years old.’
‘What does that have to do with the book Professor Strauss had?’
‘Before his death, Lev was doing a lot of communication with Professor Namati. Letters, e-mail. I saw the name several times on documents at Lev’s office and on his computer.’
‘Maybe they’re just friends.’
‘Possibly. Except for this.’ Lourds pulled out a Post-it and passed it over to Miriam.
Namati code cipher?
Miriam pushed the piece of paper back across the table. ‘What does that mean?’
‘You know what a code cipher is, don’t you?’
‘It’s a master key to a code.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Lourds grinned. ‘If I’m right, and I think that I am, that book Lev was working so hard to translate is written in code as well. Merely cracking the language to provide a translation isn’t going to be enough to solve all the mysteries associated with the book. Something else is hidden in its pages, and I’m sure Lev suspected that.’
‘Does Professor Namati know he has the code cipher?’
‘I doubt it. But in order to ascertain that, we’ll have to talk to him.’
‘“We”?’
Lourds nodded. ‘If you’re up to it.’
‘We’re going to Iran?’ The thought made Miriam’s guts churn. Her father had escaped that country once, then died there trying to close a case for the Mossad.
‘Yes.’
‘Just like that?’ Miriam didn’t have to fake incredulity. She was feeling it.
‘Well, I’ll have to talk to the US State Department first, but it shouldn’t be a problem. I can trade on the fact that I’m a scholar. I’ve spoken in Iran before, though it’s certainly been a while. But it shouldn’t be a problem. If you’re up to a little adventure, I think I can fold you under the umbrella as my graduate assistant. I’ll pay your expenses and will add a stipend at the end of this.’
Miriam thought about that, and her throat turned dry. With Iran in its current situation under the Ayatollah, with a populace striking back to get their voices heard in elections, she felt like she’d be surrounded by enemies. She swallowed hard. ‘Okay.’
She could only imagine what Katsas Shavit would say when she learned of the plan.
37
Tense and anxious, Miriam sat in the taxi’s backseat and watched the line of cars approaching the Israeli airport checkpoint.
‘Shouldn’t be much longer.’ The heavy-set driver cranked down his window, filling the car interior with the smell of exhaust along with his sharp cologne, and picked up his papers. ‘Some days you get through quickly. Other days, like today, not so quickly. That’s why it’s always better to arrive early. Have your passports ready.’
Miriam dug hers out from her purse. Next to her, Lourds was lost in Lev Strauss’s mysterious book. He had it open on one knee and was making notes in his journal.
They’d had breakfast together that morning, but only after she’d beaten on his door to wake him. Lourds hadn’t been a scintillating conversationalist. It had taken him most of yesterday to get tickets for her and himself, and he’d gotten frustrated. Miriam had finally taken it upon herself to spend time on the phone talking to travel agents, and even had to have Katsas Shavit intercede — quietly — to make the trip happen. Travel at the time was exceptionally high.
Part of his frustration, she felt, was related to his inability to make sense of the journal. He seemed to be translating it quickly, and she was impressed by that because she’d worked at translating some of the pages herself and found it almost beyond her grasp. She’d even copied some of the pictures with the specially encrypted phone the Mossad had provided for her and sent it off to the intelligence division. The encryption staff there had only marginally improved on what she’d been able to do.
Katsas Shavit had admitted that the book was beyond what the intelligence division could do — and many of them were linguistics professors. She’d also learned that Professor Thomas Lourds was a frequent translation go-to person for the Mossad, CIA, and other international intelligence agencies.
That impressed Miriam even more because Lourds had never mentioned it. She didn’t know if he was merely being secretive or if he really didn’t think that much of the work he’d done for those agencies. In some ways, he was different than she’d thought he would be. Arrogant and egotistical, definitely, but he was also putting his life on the line to find out who had killed his friend.
She nudged his knee, then had to do it again, almost hard enough to dislodge the book. ‘Hey, Professor.’
He looked up at her and, for an instant, looked like a small child who had just woken up in a strange place. He glanced around, then took a deep breath and stretched. ‘What?’
‘Passport.’ Miriam brandished hers.
Turning to his backpack between them, Lourds withdrew his passport and handed it to her. She was amazed at how thick it was. He returned his attention to the book and his work.
‘Have you been to Istanbul?’
She nodded, then realized he wasn’t watching her. ‘Yes.’
‘Beautiful city.’
‘One of my favorites.’
‘When did you go there?’
‘My father took me when I was a little girl.’
Lourds looked up at her then and smiled. ‘Your father traveled a lot?’
‘Some. He repped some art-acquisition galleries.’
Before Lourds could respond, a bullet cored through the back window behind them and spread their driver’s brains over the windshield in a crimson splash.