22

Stonehenge Visitor’s Center

They waded through a cluster of thatch-roofed Neolithic houses, each of them designed to replicate the homes the Stonehenge workers would have occupied. They were single-room dwellings with chalk walls, the interior rimmed with wood and woven furniture, a fire pit in the center. Real-life children ran in and out of the replica village, giggling, chasing each other toward an enormous stone tilted on its side. Its placard declared it the size and weight of one of the original sarsen stones. It had a rope embedded on one end.

No one could move it.

A tow-headed girl was hopping beside the stone, a raggedy bunny doll clutched in one hand. She reminded Salem of Mercy, which brought a wave of grief that felt like a gut punch.

Salem forced her attention away, striding past the stone and through the sleek metal poles of the visitor’s center. The structure was steel and glass, but cleverly constructed to blend seamlessly into the English countryside. The gift shop to her right had a line snaking out the door. The museum to the left required tickets, but Charlie flashed identification to the guard, and they were immediately ushered inside.

The museum’s interior was dark and crowded. Salem kept to the periphery, her eyes scanning the bones and blades under glass, the landscape murals behind them, the interpretive signs all around. An informative lecture was playing on a background loop.

She’d known since she was young that she saw the world differently than most kids. Where her classmates would charge the playground at recess and fight over the swing set, Salem would study the ground, searching for patterns. It had soothed her even back then.

The jungle gym was a tetrahedron.

In winter, she could spend hours studying the six-fold symmetry of snowflakes.

In summer, she’d search out the Fibonacci petals of a black-eyed Susan and drift into its endless possibilities. Or she’d duck into a shady spot and search out ferns, counting the fractal pattern, thrilled if it was pinnate beyond four.

When her mother introduced her to patterns in code—starting with simple substitution ciphers and working toward more complex sequences—Salem realized she’d finally found her world, the place where she wasn’t an odd duck and where everything could be broken down into mathematically precise logic. She’d been excited to discover how many women had been pivotal in the development of computers. Jean Jennings Bartik was one of six women who created programs for ENIAC, the first electronic general computer, in the 1940s. A decade later, Grace Hopper led the creation of COBOL, the original widely used computer programming language. Computer science had been built on the work of women, who in the early years entered through the field of mathematics.

But it wasn’t just that it was a field that accepted women. With computers, Salem felt like she was home.

Bel had always made her feel loved—beautiful Bel, who was as kind as she was popular—but computers introduced Salem to a world where she could fly.

Her pattern-finding gift grew rusty, lazy even, once she hit her teens. Her talent became almost exclusively focused on computers. That changed when she was forced to crack the Beale Cipher.

She needed to call on that latent skill again.

Charlie disappeared and then returned to her side, guiding her toward another room. “I asked a docent. The re-creation of the henge through all its iterations is back here. Maybe we’ll see something in there?”

Salem nodded. “When was the last time you were on site?”

“Maybe five years ago. Right before this center opened in 2013. It’s grand, isn’t it?”

Salem nodded, studying the artifacts in the room as they made their way to the next. The stone implements used by the workers on site thousands of years ago didn’t seem helpful. The plaque sharing the Stonehenge worker diet—pig, whose charred foot bones suggested they were cooked over an open flame, sloe and blackberries, hazelnuts and honey—was worthless. Same with the pottery shards, the stone axe heads, and the re-creation of Neolithic man, which reminded Salem of a young and confused Charlton Heston.

She dismissed each of these bits of information as irrelevant, but the truth was, Salem could be staring right at a clue and have no idea. Her heart sank with the realization. She couldn’t do this without Bel.

She probably couldn’t do it even with Bel.

“Hey.” Charlie was at her side, looking concerned. “You okay?”

Salem’s voice was high-pitched. Her Ativan was wearing off. “I’m worried I can’t do this. Not alone.”

A woman standing next to Salem tossed a worried glance her way. She must have spoken louder than she’d thought.

Charlie smiled, transforming his features, softening him. Salem realized that her guess back at the Mayflower Pub had been spot on; he was not even ten years older than her. “But you’re not alone. I’m here with you. This failure lands squarely on both our shoulders, should it come to that. Same with a success, you know. We share what we find.”

Salem drew a ragged breath. He was right. It didn’t matter what she thought she was or was not capable of. Besides, she had more Ativan in the car. “Is this the model the docent told you about?”

They were standing in front of a reproduction of the original Stonehenge, all ninety-six stones in the definitive circle, erected around 3000 BC. They stared down at it. Unlike the actual stones outside, these lacked the graffiti and the pitting. Salem was disappointed to confirm that Charlie had been right—the full model contained the stone that she’d seen in Muirinn Molony’s tiny Stonehenge, only in this version, nothing was carved on it.

It was merely Stone 28.

The word carved in Mrs. Molony’s version had made the stone seem more prominent, causing the trick of the eyes that made Salem see a way to mark a woman’s cycle where the rest of the world saw a stone circle.

Charlie spoke firmly. “We can do this. We’re looking for a simple code. What was the timeline of the Beale Cipher, the 1800s? Probably that would be the latest the code was placed here, more likely earlier, but in any case, pre-computer as we know it. Something basic, maybe akin to a Morse code, or along the lines of a Playfair Cipher? Or if it was put here by the Neolithics—and I can’t see how that would be—it would …”

But Salem wasn’t listening.

She wasn’t even breathing.

His word—pre-computer—had shaken loose what she should have noticed all along.

She saw it, clear as a clarion, and her mind was exploding with the realization.

She wasn’t looking for a code in something.

Stonehenge itself was the code.

Jason watched her dispassionately.

She’d cracked it. He could see it in her eyes. He knew no one else had been able to, guessed the Grimalkin would be livid that Wiley had done it so quickly. That planted a small smile on his face, one that didn’t mar the bland mien he’d cultivated, his appearance rendered even less remarkable by a pair of round-rimmed glasses and a baseball cap.

She turned to Agent Charlie Thackeray, hands shaking as she pointed at the replica of Stonehenge. Thackeray hooted, lifted her up in the air, then set her back down before turning on his heel toward one of the guards, likely to acquire a private room so they could verify whatever Wiley had discovered. The genius cryptanalyst turned back to the replica, visibly trembling with her discovery. Her fingers twitched at the zipper of her portable computer.

Jason wondered briefly what it would be like to possess a mind like hers.

He returned his attention to the pig teeth he’d been pretending to study, his heartbeat drumming pleasantly. The plaque said that deterioration suggested the pigs had been fed honey until they were harvested at nine months old for an apparent feast. He guessed they were delicious.

He slid his cell phone out of his pocket, his thumb dialing as he brought it his ear.

“She’s got it.”

There was an intake of breath, small and sharp, followed by a moment of silence. Finally, “Call the Grimalkin.”

Jason’s second call was a hair longer. The Grimalkin spoke first. “You’re calling because she’s broken the first wall of the Stonehenge train.”

“Yes.”

Jason thought he heard wheezing close to the phone, the hum of a crowd behind. He realized it was the Grimalkin laughing.

“She’s going to Blessington next, count on it, to finish what the old witch started for her there.” The Grimalkin sounded happy, which disappointed Jason. The assassin must have already cracked this part of the code.

The Grimalkin continued. “I’ll meet you at the Dublin airport. I will be in the country when she explodes this. I want to see her face at that moment, right before I kill her.”

Jason hung up.

The Grimalkin knew Jason would follow his orders. There was nothing more to say.