The Voynich Cypher

by Russell Blake

  “So what’s your deal, Steven? Are you single? Seeing someone?” Natalie asked.

  What was that all about? Had he been that obvious? It seemed that every woman he was in contact with could read his innermost thoughts. So much for his inscrutable poker face.

  “I’m widowed. Two and a half years ago…”

  “I know that. If I could find you on the street, I did that much background-checking. No, my question was, are you seeing anyone now?” Natalie pressed.

  “Why? What’s it to you?” Steven volleyed.

  “We may be gone for a while. A long while. I have no idea how anything is going to turn out, but I do know that Morbius Frank won’t stop until he has the Scroll and its secret. The Order is going to be the same way. So if you have someone you’re seeing and you try to stay in touch, sneaking in a call here and there, it will endanger us both, as long as we’re together,” Natalie explained matter-of-factly.

  Steven digested this. His imagination had been running away with him. The idea that Natalie was interested in him was ludicrous, he supposed. She was at least fifteen years younger, maybe more, and doubtlessly had men fighting to get her clothes off every time she went out. The notion that she’d be drawn to him was some delusional male-menopausal fantasy. She was just trying to assess his liabilities.

  “Nobody special,” he admitted.

  Her eyebrow cocked again.

  “And your receptionist? Gwen? Nothing going on there?” she asked disbelievingly.

  “My office manager?” Steven corrected. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Why not? She clearly likes you, and she reacted to me like a cat dropped in boiling water. You could see her back arch from across the room,” Natalie observed.

  “I think you got the wrong impression of Gwen. She’s a professional, and we’re not…we’re not an item. So don’t worry.”

  “Seems like there’s some unfinished business there, whenever this is all over, Dr. Cross,” Natalie said.

  “Thanks for the dating tip, but that’s not an option. It’s not something I’m interested in.”

  “Women, or Gwen?” Natalie asked simply.

  Steven was momentarily flummoxed. This wasn’t at all the discussion he was expecting first thing in the morning, with teams of assassins hiding behind every bush.

  “You missed your calling as a high-pressure interrogator,” Steven advised.

  The computer pinged, and he returned his attention to the screen.

  “Ah. The file’s finished,” Steven announced, saved by the bell. He turned his attention back to the little laptop screen, and Natalie let the touchy subject drop.

  Ben skulked to the bathroom, casting a furtive glance at Gwen and Sophie. He was having a rough day again, and the paranoia was setting in even after he’d done his maintenance dose of heroin that morning before making it to the office. He despised himself for his weakness and the constant dull ache of pain that was his legacy from the horrible accident that had left him scarred. If he’d been paying more attention that night he would have seen the car swinging out of the driveway, and instead of striking it with his motor scooter and flying thirty feet through the air to bounce against the cold cobblestones like a broken ragdoll, he would have braked in time, or swerved and dodged it.

  He’d played the scene over in his head many times, nearly every night for the seven years since that fateful evening. As he was recovering in the hospital, his bones broken and his skin shredded, after three operations to repair the internal injuries, he replayed the incident, and each time he made a minor adjustment, or had been going slower, or had been paying more care to the road – and less to his fiancée, Sabrina, whose arms had been locked around his waist, distracting him with their warm embrace.

  They’d met at university, where he’d been finishing up his doctoral thesis for a Ph.D. in computer science and she’d been majoring in political science. At first there had been little in common – she a native of Sienna, only in the big city of Florence for her studies, and he, an American expat who’d decided to live abroad and who shied away from social situations. They’d met at a mutual friend’s party and, other than an immediate and powerful physical attraction that had resulted in her joining him in his dingy little apartment that first night, they hadn’t really found much to talk about. And yet one night turned into a week, and then into six months, and ultimately a discussion of marriage.

  It was an odd pairing. Sabrina was stunning in a no-makeup, naturally-beautiful way that could stop traffic even in a city filled with gorgeous women, whereas Ben, while decent-looking – his nose a little too big, his eyes a hair too close together – was naturally withdrawn and introspective. She was the life of most parties, whereas he was a loner, but somehow circumstances conspired to bring them together, and their passion could have powered a small city. By the time their first month together had passed she was living with him, and both were convinced this was it.

  When his scooter had crashed into the VW, he’d flown over the front fender and hood. Sabrina hadn’t been so lucky, and her trajectory had carried her headfirst into the car’s roof. The emergency medical technicians who’d appeared on the scene within ten minutes said she’d died instantly from the broken neck and had probably felt no pain. That was slim consolation to Ben, whose waking hell on earth was only relieved by the ever-present morphine they’d given him for the pain. Once he’d been discharged, he’d been weaned off the meds and given less powerful painkillers, but they had virtually no effect, and his suffering had been ongoing.

  The counselor at the hospital had been of the opinion that much of his discomfort was mental, but Ben didn’t see how that theory helped or changed anything. He was miserable, physically and spiritually, and even after the plastic surgeons had repaired him to the point where he didn’t frighten small children, he’d felt like his life was over and he was running out the clock on a tortuous existence.

  The first time he’d smoked heroin it had numbed the pain, and by the time he’d moved to skin-plinking, his chemical romance was firmly established. It was only a matter of time before he’d moved to shooting up, the progression inevitable. Ben wasn’t stupid, and he understood that he was dancing with the devil each time he injected himself, but a part of him was dead, and the drug helped him get through the day. Heroin was plentiful in Italy, a function of the trafficking from North Africa and Afghanistan, so he never had any problems copping. But the cost was a killer – it took ever larger doses to achieve the same effect, and he’d watched his meager savings leak into his arm. He’d tried reducing the amount gradually, but in the end it was no good, and he now found himself in a different kind of hell.

  He was still one of the fastest and best coders around, making a more than livable wage, but when the hunger was riding you like a pony it was never enough. And his weekly sexual holidays with the working girls cost him dearly as well. Since the accident, he hadn’t sought out any company other than that of professionals. He knew that there was no way a broken, addled and addicted wreck would be able to attract any kind of a mate, so he didn’t waste his time in a depressing, doomed-to-failure pursuit, preferring to stay with the prostitutes who would pretend he was normal as long as he could afford their charms.

  He splashed some water on his face and studied the scars in the mirror, wondering how long he could continue like this. He needed to figure out how to get his hands on more money, or every day would be this kind of purgatory, where the dose was never sufficient to make him feel good and barely kept the howling void at bay.

  Ben was loyal and thought of himself as a basically good man, but the monkey on his back had its own agenda. And the monkey needed its medicine. No medicine, and the withdrawals would come, and perhaps worse, the dreams – the recollection of Sabrina, fun and filled with life, and then the crumpled heap of lifeless flesh next to a car door, the victim of half a second’s carelessness in a lifetime of perfectly-timed events.

  Whatever it took, he wanted to avoid th
e dreams.

  Dreams of Sabrina, glaring accusingly at him with only half a face.

  CHAPTER 16

  Sia Amieri’s oversized frame filled the doorway of the private detective’s offices in Florence. Seated in front of the mouse-like investigator, Dr. Morbius Frank was all polished relaxation in his hand-tailored lightweight navy blue suit, worn, as was his custom, with no tie, the shirt opened one button, with a red cravat hugging his neck. The investigator, Paolo, was explaining the steps he’d taken, while Frank nodded periodically in approval.

  “Besides that, I also have two of my staff making inquiries with Cross’s employees, as instructed, to see what sort of accommodation can be reached for helping us with anything of potential interest,” Paolo explained.

  “I’m not price sensitive…within reason,” Frank underscored.

  “Yes, and I’ve shared that. Perhaps it would help if we knew precisely what we were looking for?” Paolo suggested, for the second time during the meeting.

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it? I’m not completely sure. Anything related to cryptography, or ancient parchments. Failing that, information on where Cross can be found.”

  “I think you’ll agree that I’ve been quite thorough. I’ll pass everything along to your associate, just as you wish.” He shot a nervous glance past Frank to where Amieri stood impassively by the far wall, in tan slacks and a dark brown leather jacket. “I would hope we have something within a day or two, at most. We’re doing everything we can. Now we just need to wait for the fly to come to the spider,” Paolo assured him.

  “Time is, alas, our most precious commodity at the moment. Please stay in touch, and get me whatever you find, no matter how seemingly inconsequential,” Frank ordered, then pushed himself to his feet, ignoring Paolo’s outstretched hand. The tense moment passed, and Paolo exhaled a sigh of relief when the pair had vacated his office. The money was stupendous, but both men exuded pure menace. He’d bent the law before, which is why Frank had contacted him, but even so, these two were in a completely different league than his customary jilted wives or corporate espionage clients. They stank of death, which Paolo recognized as clearly as he understood the value of their cash. In troubled times like the present, he couldn’t be as selective about his customers as in times of prosperity – and Frank was paying top dollar.

  Which in the end, was what mattered.

  Paolo lifted the telephone handset from its cradle and dialed a familiar number.

  Natalie peered over Steven’s shoulder at the screen.

  “What does it mean?” she asked.

  “It’s the first step. The program established a character substitution pattern, so now we have a cypher. The problem is that we need to organize the letters into something coherent. That will take a little while, but I seem to remember that this was written in Latin, so that will shorten the time required for me to figure it out. It was a long time ago, but I still remember the basics of this document. Give me some space and some quiet and I can nail it,” Steven advised.

  “You have the floor. I’ll go pack. We need to make tracks sooner than later.”

  Natalie left him to his devices. He entered the string into the program that would perform the painstaking process of trial and error to structure the seemingly gibberish letters into a lucid order. Soon, he had the Latin organized coherently, and it was just a matter of translating it so it made sense.

  He studied the familiar words. “Occultumest…”

  When Natalie returned from her bedroom with her bags in hand, Steven was finished with the translation and was surfing the web to make sense out of the cryptic message. He looked up and was momentarily taken aback by a Natalie with long brown hair. She looked like a different person, which he supposed was the whole point of the wig. He quickly regained his composure and fixed a look of concentration on his face.

  “Well? How’s it going?” the new, improved Natalie asked.

  “I translated it. But it’s not like a street address. Remember, this was written almost six hundred years ago.”

  “What does it say?”

  Natalie approached him, and he held up the sheet of notepaper where he’d scribbled his findings.

  “Translated, it reads: ‘Six paces from Alexis in the middle basilica stands a crucifix. Illumination into the sacred text is near the savior’s head on the cross’.” Steven scratched his ear. “I think that’s pretty clear, no?”

  “That’s it? It might as well say: ‘Follow the doves to the wall of silence’. How do we figure out what it means?” Natalie asked.

  “This is the second hard part. Just decrypting it would have been a multi-week or month process if I hadn’t written this software program, and organizing the random letters into coherent script is no small feat. It helps that I remembered this was in Latin, otherwise we would have needed to increase the complexity for the program, to make it compare the letter series to all the idioms being used at the time the parchment was written; that would have taken some serious time. We’re actually well ahead of where we could reasonably expect to be,” Steven explained. He could see she was disappointed, but he’d just accomplished the near-impossible, so he felt a little defensive.

  Natalie seemed to sense he was on edge and said nothing. She went to the coffee pot and prepared more while he stared at the seemingly meaningless clue. He entered some of the key words, hoping for a hit, but didn’t get anything. He didn’t even know where to begin.

  “This part is going to take a while. I need to run different word combinations into the search engines in the hopes something comes up. It’s trial and error, with no guarantees. And Natalie? This was written in the mid to late 1400s. It’s quite possible that whatever it’s referring to was destroyed over the years, or forgotten. I wouldn’t get my hopes up. That, and we don’t even know what country it’s referring to, much less city. Latin was used everywhere by the Church. Whatever the message is directing us to could be anywhere in the known world of the time,” Steven warned. “Be that as it may, I have a program that will do these comparisons at high speed. It’s on the disk I loaded onto this computer. I’ll have it churn through the data over the next hour. Maybe we’ll get a hit.”

  “It seems like a long shot,” Natalie said dejectedly.

  “Everything in cryptography is a long shot. There’s no such thing as instant results, at least not that I’ve found. Sorry. It is what it is.”

  Steven tapped in a few commands, and a crude screen popped up. Peering at his notes, he entered all of the words from the message into the fields, and then hit ‘Enter’. The computer began working, and he returned his attention to Natalie.

  “We need to stick around the villa until this is done; it’s going to access online search engines and record the results. Want to get some air?” Steven invited.

  “Sure. It’s not like I have anything else to do.”

  They walked slowly along the driveway, enjoying the sun’s warmth on their skin. Natalie broached the obvious subject.

  “What’s your preference for new places to hide?” she asked, only half serious.

  “Let’s see if we can get a fix on where the parchment is directing us,” Steven answered humorlessly.

  They meandered across the road and turned towards town, the gravel on the shoulder crunching beneath their feet.

  “I’m sorry you’re involved in this, Steven. I know how odd it has to feel being pursued when you haven’t done anything wrong,” Natalie said – the closest that she’d come to apologizing.

  Steven hesitated, glancing at her profile.

  “The wig isn’t bad, but I like your real hair better.”

  The corners of her mouth twitched, and her nose crinkled.

  “Why, thank you. Are you always such a smooth talker with the ladies?”

  “It’s been a while…and believe it or not, I know exactly what it’s like to be on the run from powerful enemies,” Steven offered.

  “I don’t think you do. Not like this. Th
ese people will torture and kill you. That’s their mission – to find the Scroll, get everything you know, and then terminate you.”

  He paused, considered his response, and then forged on with it.

  “In another life, I had everyone from organized crime syndicates to intelligence services trying to kill me. I’ve taken bullets. Trust me. I know what it’s like,” Steven stressed.

  She stopped. Steven turned to face her. A moment seemed to pass between them.

  “I couldn’t find out much about you when I was checking. I suspected there might be a reason for that when you took down our tail without breaking a sweat. Care to share?”

  He chose his words carefully. “A while ago, I pissed off the wrong groups, trying to fight odds I should have walked away from. I disrupted a very lucrative scheme, and it wound up collapsing at considerable cost to these groups, so they tried to take me out. These were very dangerous adversaries. Not some jealous husband or impatient loan shark. I’m talking world-class bad guys. And I’m still here. They aren’t. Or at least, most of them aren’t.”

  She appraised him as he spoke.

  “Perhaps I misjudged your temperament. Sounds like it isn’t a good idea to underestimate you, Dr. Cross.”

  Steven didn’t have any glib responses. They resumed their stroll.

  “I’m thinking we need to stay in Italy. We don’t want to trigger any alarms with your passport. Agreed?” Natalie asked, returning to her original topic.

  “That’s fine. Maybe a bigger city where we’ll blend in easily. Bologna, or Milan, or even Rome…”

  “I’ve heard good things about Bologna. If you’re okay with that, barring something materializing with your software program, I’m for going there. We can drive,” Natalie said.

  He rolled his head, relaxing the taut muscles in his neck, then looked over at her. “Beyond running, do you have a plan?”