The Lucifer Code

PENGUIN BOOKS

The Lucifer Code

Charles Brokaw has been a university professor, a teacher, a little league coach and a rodeo cowboy. He’s a frequent speaker, who has given lectures at such widely divergent places as the CIA, West Point and science-fiction conventions. He’s travelled widely, and has more interests than he can possibly keep up with, even if he lives to be a hundred. Among his other many passions, he’s an expert on aviation, international politics, advanced weaponry and pulp fiction. He collects both scholarly military non-fiction and comic books. He lives in the Midwest with his family.

The Lucifer Code

CHARLES BROKAW

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014,

USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

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New Delhi—110 017, India

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(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

www.penguin.com

First published 2010

Copyright © Trident Media Group, 2010

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-195720-3

Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Epilogue

For my wife, with love.
You make it all possible.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my excellent agent, Robert Gottlieb, at Trident Media Group, and to Libby Kellogg, who ably assists him there. Thanks also to my family and students, who are the light of my life.

Thanks are also due to the wonderful people at Penguin Books, including Alex Clarke, Anthea Townsend, Andrew Smith, Helen Eka, Nick Lowndes and Tom Chicken. I can’t thank you enough for your professionalism and enthusiasm.

CHAPTER

1

Ataturk International Airport

Yesilkoy District

Istanbul, Turkey

15 March 2010

‘P
rofessor Lourds.
Professor Lourds
.’

Dr Thomas Lourds heard his name being called above the cacophony of languages surrounding him. He wasn’t expecting anyone to meet him here inside the crowded passenger terminal of Istanbul’s busy international airport. He didn’t recognize the voice, either—but he could tell it was a young woman. Thanks to years of teaching college students at Harvard, not to mention a well-earned reputation as a ladies’ man, he was rarely wrong when he gauged a woman’s age from her voice. Curious, he stepped out of the flow of pedestrian traffic rushing through the airport toward baggage and ground transportation on the lower level.

A pretty redhead waved at him from twenty feet back and fought to get through the crowd between them. A mother leading two small children glared at the young woman. Not every traveller was upset—a young man in his mid-twenties wearing a bright French football jersey studied the woman who’d jostled him in open admiration.

There was a lot to like. Tall and lean, she moved with the fluid grace of an athlete or a dancer. Lourds admired the view, too. She was dressed in hip-hugging jeans and a crop top that exposed some impressive cleavage above and a tanned midriff below. A diamond gleamed in her navel, emphasizing toned abs. Her dark red hair curled and glided across her bare, freckled shoulders. But try as he might, Lourds couldn’t remember meeting her before.

‘You
are
Professor Thomas Lourds, right?’ The young woman came to an abrupt stop in front of him. Her hazel eyes drank him in. ‘If you’re not, I’m gonna be really embarrassed.’

Lourds smiled a little bashfully. It was a look he could pull off when occasion called for it. He was nearly old enough to be her father, so he figured a little bashfulness on his part might quell the disparaging looks he was receiving from some of the passers-by.

‘I’m Thomas Lourds.’ He shifted his cracked leather backpack to his other shoulder and extended his hand. ‘If we’ve met, I have to apologize. Your name slips my mind.’

‘No, we haven’t met.’ She shook hands. Her grip was surprisingly firm, with soft skin toughened at the base of her fingers and the heel of her hand. The young lady must work out a lot.

‘You relieve my mind. I didn’t think I’d forget meeting such a beautiful young woman. And if I had, someone should shoot me and put me out of my misery.’

The redhead smiled at him.

Slow down
, Lourds chided himself.
You’ll scare her away.

But the chance meeting perked up his day considerably. He’d spent the last several hours on a British Airways plane from London. The first-class seating had been perfect—except for the septuagenarian he’d been stuck with the whole way. She’d regaled him with stories about her life and her digestive tract and he’d plied himself with wine in self-defence. He still felt some of the after-effects from the Zinfandel and fully intended to lose the card the woman had pressed into his hand at the end of the trip.

Or possibly burn it in effigy.

‘You must think I’m crazy,’ the redhead continued, ‘calling after you in an airport, but I really wanted to see you.’