Free The Magdalene Cipher by Jim Hougan Page A

mill. So, also, was an essay on the early Middle Ages, the so-called Dark Ages, which asked the peculiar question “Who Turned Out the Lights?” By way of an answer, there was a photo of the pope and a cutline that read, “What was the Church trying to hide?”
    Elsewhere, Dunphy found a page of weirdly illustrated horoscopes that led him to suspect that the editor must have been drunk when the magazine had been put together. Indeed, the only article having anything to do with viticulture, he saw, was an essay on “The Magdalene Cultivar: Old Wine from Palestine” by a man named Georges Watkin. Having only the most practical interest in wines, Dunphy set the magazine aside and turned to the last item in the file, a five-by-seven index card on which the following had been typed:
    This is an Andromeda-sensitive, Special Access Program (SAP) whose contents, in whole or part, have been transferred to the MK-IMAGE Registry at the Monarch Assurance Co. (15 Alpenstrasse, Zug, Switzerland). (See cross-references on reverse.) Report all inquiries concerning this file to the Security Research Staff (SRS) in the Office of the Director (Suite 404) .
    This gave Dunphy pause. The geeks who’d debriefed him—Rhinegold and what’s-his-name—had asked him about the MK-IMAGE cryptonym. And he said he’d never heard of it. Which was true. Until now .
    Neither had he ever heard of the Security Research Staff. But that didn’t mean much. The CIA was probably the most compartmented agency in government. Its components were myriad, and their names were constantly changing. What puzzled him more than the existence of the SRS was the fact that the Agency would store sensitive files abroad, and that inquiries about those files would have to be reported to a special staff. From a counterintelligence standpoint, the practice was problematical. And even more importantly, from Dunphy’s standpoint (which is to say, from the standpoint of a thief in the night), reports to a “Security Research Staff” could be awkward indeed. What if, in pursuing some of the questions that were troubling him, he requested a series of files marked Andromeda-sensitive? What would happen? He thought about it for a moment, then felt a shrug somewhere deep inside himself. He’d show them Eddie Piper’s FOIA requests, and they’d see that he was just doing his job. If they didn’t like it, they could send him back to London .
    Having resolved what seemed, at first, to be a sticky issue, he turned the card over in his hand .
    SCHIDLOF, PROF. LEO (London)
X-refs—Zug
    Gomelez (Family)
    Dagobert II
    Dulles, Allen
    Dunphy, Jack
    Jung, Carl
    Davis, Thomas
    Curry, Jesse
    Optical Magick, Inc.
    Pound, Ezra
    Sigisbert IV
    143rd Surgical Air Wing
    Dunphy studied the card, more alarmed than flattered to find himself sandwiched between Allen Dulles and Carl Jung. Dulles was a legend, of course. He’d been a spy during the first world war, and a superspy in the second, operating out of Switzerland in both cases. When Hitler surrendered, Dulles had joined OSS chief Wild Bill Donovan in lobbying President Truman to create the Central Intelligence Agency—which Dulles had later gone on to lead .
    But Dunphy knew less about Jung. A Swiss psychiatrist, or analyst. Wrote about the collective unconscious. (Whatever that was.) And archetypes. (Whatever they were.) And myths. And flying saucers. Or, wait a second: was that Carl Jung or Wilhelm Reich? Or Joseph Campbell? Dunphy couldn’t remember. He’d had so many “brush contacts” with erudition while in college, it seemed at times as if he knew a little of everything—which is to say, next to nothing about anything. Well, he’d look up Jung when he had the chance .
    Meanwhile, things were looking decidedly Swiss. According to its masthead , Archaeus was published in Zug, which was also home to the Special Registry. Availing himself of an