The Voynich Cypher

by Russell Blake

  The driver finally pulled up to the station; they paid him, tipped him and climbed out. A bank of lights bathed the entrance in a blinding glare at the front of the massive contemporary steel and glass terminal.

  Inside, they headed for a fast food restaurant whose familiar golden arches twinkled in welcome. Once seated, two sodas before them, Steven breached the topic that was nagging at him.

  “We need to get back to the hotel. Now.”

  “That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard. We don’t know how much whoever killed Frederick knows, but we have to assume it’s a lot,” Natalie warned.

  “True. But I need my passport and money, which is in the safe. And if we want to have any shot at decrypting our find, we’ll need the program I loaded on the laptop. We’re pretty much boned without those. We have no chance of traveling without my papers, or of figuring out what the basilica’s parchment says without the computer.”

  “Steven…that’s a real problem. We can’t just traipse in there without attracting attention.”

  “True. But I have a plan. Sort of.” Steven proceeded to fill her in on his thinking. She sat quietly, and then nodded.

  “It could work. But a lot of things need to go right.”

  “I know. But I don’t think we have any other options. And the longer we linger here, the more time our attackers have to regroup and stake out the hotel. I say we go in now and take our chances,” Steven pressed.

  “Okay. I go in first, take the elevator to the third floor and wait for you by the fire exit at the end of the hall…”

  “Right. We can check the street for any surveillance on our approach. If there isn’t any, we’re still ahead of them, and we grab our stuff and get out. If there is, we’ll need a plan B. Which I haven’t thought of yet. But having Frederick’s gun is a decent equalizer.”

  “I don’t like it, but I guess there aren’t any other options. Why don’t I go in and clean out both our rooms, and you keep watch on the street?” Natalie asked.

  “And what if someone’s waiting in one of the rooms?” Steven countered.

  “I’ll take the gun,” Natalie offered.

  Steven considered it. “Have you ever used one?” he asked.

  Natalie shot him a scornful look. “Steven, there are a lot of things you don’t know about me. Maybe if you’re good I’ll tell you a few. One you might find interesting is that I graduated top of my class at Quantico,” Natalie said.

  “Quantico? You were FBI?” Steven asked incredulously. Natalie looked like a lot of things, but a Fed wasn’t one of them.

  “It was a while ago, but yes, I spent six years with the Bureau as a Special Agent. I know how to use a gun…and I’ve used one more times than I care to remember. Probably a lot more than you ever have.”

  He looked at her with new appreciation. “You may well have. I suppose it sounds like I’m being a complete chauvinist if I insist we do this together…”

  “Correct. Now that’s settled, let’s stop the back and forth and get to the hotel before they have a chance to stake it out. I just wish I knew how they tracked us to the church,” Natalie groused.

  “There are only a few possibilities, and none of them are good. Either they followed the car somehow, or Danny tipped them off.”

  “What about your office?” Natalie asked.

  “Impossible. All they sent me was the decrypted parchment. But it hadn’t been translated from Latin or assembled into anything intelligible. That’s the weakest possibility. I’d put my money on either the car, or your friend’s Italian contact has a big mouth. Those are far more likely.”

  “No point in speculating. We can worry about Danny later. Let’s go do what we have to do,” Natalie said, sliding out of the hard plastic booth. “I’ll be right back. I’m going to hit the ladies room. I don’t think I’ll need a toolkit in my boots, and I can move a lot faster without the drill cutting into my ankle…”

  Upon her return, they exited the restaurant and approached the cab line. A sleepy man with an elaborate turban grunted a welcome as they slid into the back seat. Steven gave the driver instructions to drop them by the Spanish Steps, a block and a half from their hotel, and once they were underway, he surreptitiously handed Natalie the gun. She expertly flipped the safety off and then slipped it into her clutch purse, with a wary glance at the driver, who was engrossed with setting a new land speed record in the noisy little Fiat and had no interest in his passengers. They lurched around several corners and were at the large plaza within a few frantic minutes. Even at the late hour, pedestrians lingered in the area – drunks, lovers, vagrants, petty thieves and several police officers.

  Natalie and Steven moved in the direction of the hotel, eyeing their surroundings for any hint of danger, but saw nothing suspicious. Fifty yards from the hotel, Steven murmured his safe combination in her ear and slipped her his room key. Natalie broke away, as agreed, and sauntered unhurriedly to the front lobby while Steven leaned into a recessed doorway and kept watch. He scanned the neighboring buildings, but didn’t detect any surveillance. The only good in any of the night’s surprises so far was that at almost three in the morning it was hard to loiter and keep an eye on the hotel without being noticed – a fact he was keenly aware of as he stood sentry, too exposed for his liking.

  Five minutes of waiting turned into ten. Steven began to get worried. His room was on the third floor facing the street, and he didn’t see any lights on. After another few minutes, he decided it was taking too long. He made his way to the lobby entrance, where he nodded to the night man before taking the stairs up to his room. On the third floor, he eased cautiously down the carpeted hall, his footsteps mercifully hushed. When he reached his door, he tried the handle, but it was locked. He strained to hear anything, but it was silent inside. Torn, he decided to chance a soft knock. He whispered into the door jamb.

  “If you’re still in there, open up. It’s me.”

  A few moments later the door opened. He pushed past Natalie into the dark room, where her bags lay on his bed, with his partially packed.

  “What’s taking so long?” he complained.

  “I had to get my stuff and make sure nobody was waiting to kill me. Then do the same in here. It took a while. Besides which, your junk is all over the room – laptop over on the desk, shaving kit strewn everywhere in the bathroom, clothes in the closet, papers in the safe…” She eyed him. “Who hangs their shirts and pants when they’re only going to be in a hotel for one night?”

  Steven ignored her and hurriedly threw his belongings into his duffle. He was finished in sixty seconds. He did a quick scan of the safe to ensure she’d removed everything, then moved to the window to peer out. Natalie was making for the door with her bag when he turned to her.

  “Slow down. There’s a problem. Looks like we’ve got company.”

  “Shit. How many?” she asked, setting her bag down and extracting the pistol from her purse.

  “Three. But hold off. It’ll take them at least a minute to get up here, assuming the desk doesn’t stop them. Follow me,” he whispered as he pushed past her, shouldering his bag.

  He cracked the door, peeked out and verified the long hall was empty. Alert for sounds of pursuit, he motioned to Natalie. The elevator motor sounded noisily. They jogged past it towards the fire stairs at the rear of the hotel as the old lift creaked to their floor. Steven pushed the heavy steel fire door open and they stepped onto the concrete landing. Natalie looked warily down the dimly-lit stairwell to the ground floor two stories below and then shrugged at Steven. They descended the stairs without hesitation, taking them two at a time. In a few moments they were at the street level. Steven eyed the door to the lobby, then moved away from it to the metal emergency exit door.

  Which was chained shut, with a padlock securing it in place.

  Perfect. Far be it for an emergency exit to be usable in the event of an emergency. Better to keep intruders out by rendering it impassable to those fleeing from an inferno.
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br />   Natalie pulled on his sleeve and gestured at the fire axe hanging on the wall.

  The pounding of the heavy steel edge against the lock sounded like an amplified battering ram. Fortunately, it was a relatively flimsy clasp, and after three blows the shattered padlock hit the concrete floor with a clatter. Steven quickly tore the chain from the handle and shouldered the door open.

  The klaxon shriek of the hotel’s alarm wailed into the night as they ran down the alley towards another small street, away from the plaza. After turning the corner, Steven stopped and moved cautiously back to watch the rear exit. Three men emerged from the hotel and scanned the street before hurriedly splitting up – two sprinting to the plaza and a lone man moving in their direction. Steven estimated he was two hundred yards away.

  Doing a quick calculation, Steven motioned to Natalie to get moving. She silently took her bag, and with a glance, nodded and jogged away, the sound of her boots on the cobblestones echoing from the dark buildings’ façades.

  Steven pressed himself into a doorway and waited. After what seemed like forever, his patience was rewarded by heavy footsteps scraping along the street.

  One man, as expected.

  Steven heard him pause at the intersection, and then after a few moments of hesitation, the footsteps continued down the larger thoroughfare – he hadn’t made the turn. Steven listened as the clumping sound of pursuit receded into the distance, then detached himself from the building and ran down the dark sidewalk in Natalie’s direction.

  She was waiting for him at the next corner. They put another block between them and any danger before hailing a slow-moving taxi and piling in, their bags hastily crammed into the back seat next to them. Steven told the driver to take them to the train station; within a few moments they were pulling away to the relative safety of the terminal.

  Natalie kept her eye on the side mirror for any signs of a tail. She relaxed after a few minutes, but still looked worried.

  “That was too close,” she said.

  “I know. But the important thing is we’re safe. For now.”

  “True, but that can change pretty quickly. Once we’re at the terminal, let’s switch cabs and find a hotel somewhere on the outskirts of town. I have three passports with me. We can book under a different name than I used at this hotel. That should be good for at least one day, while we figure out what we’re going to do next,” Natalie suggested.

  “I think we’re better off at the train station. I’ll need a few hours to decrypt the basilica clue, but it should be a lot easier than the parchment because I already know the substitution letters. It’s just a matter of entering them into the program and running the software to see what comes up in Latin, and then translating it. Let’s hope this one’s a little more specific.”

  “Can you do that at the station?” Natalie asked.

  “I’ll have to. I don’t like the idea of checking into a hotel at three in the morning. We don’t know what kind of resources we’re up against, and if these clowns have clout with the police, it’s conceivable they could call the area hotels, scouting for late bookings. I don’t like the odds that there will be more than one couple checking in without a reservation in the wee hours of the morning.” Steven paused. “The terminal will have crowds and, within a little while, the early morning rush should start. I think it’s a safer bet. When we get there I’ll change my shirt and put on a baseball cap, and you can do something with your wig.” Steven glanced at her. “And maybe slip out of the Catwoman suit into something less…formal.”

  Natalie smiled. “I have some jeans, so no problem. And you’re probably right about the hotel. I’m tired, but not so much I want to take any more stupid chances. I think we’ve had enough brushes with danger for one night,” Natalie said. “But what’s wrong with the Catwoman suit? You don’t like it?” Her violet eyes bored through him.

  “I didn’t say I don’t like it. I said that it may be too, uh, distinctive. My thoughts on your getup have nothing to do with it,” Steven said, flustered.

  “Worked pretty well with the church guard,” Natalie observed, and then let it drop.

  They both obviously still remembered the basilica kiss, even if it was part of their cover. But now wasn’t the time or place to explore that.

  Still, Steven could taste her in his mind’s eye and vividly recall the way her skin and breath smelled, as her tongue darted…

  No point in dwelling on it.

  “They escaped?” Synthe seethed into the phone.

  “Yes, sir. They cleared out of their rooms and slipped out the back. We searched for them, but it was no good. Way too large an area for three men, once they were out of the hotel,” the voice reported. “I’m sorry, sir. It was only a matter of seconds. We almost had them.”

  “That’s like being almost pregnant. It’s a meaningless statement.” Synthe calmed himself. “Where does this leave us?”

  “We’re expanding to our contacts in the police, and by morning we’ll have several assets working the day shift at Interpol. Hopefully we can get something on one of their cell phones, or be alerted when Cross contacts his office.”

  “Keep me informed. So far we’ve been outflanked by these two, and now we have an additional player who’s proved they’ll kill. We need to get the girl and her new friend and take them off the field. If we don’t, I have a feeling the other guys will, and then we’re out of luck,” Synthe underscored.

  “I understand. We’re actively working it. I’ll check in when I know more,” the voice said, and then the line went dead.

  Synthe lit a cigarette and noisily blew a plume of smoke at the desk lamp in his hotel room. The situation was rapidly deteriorating. He paced for a few minutes, considering the ramifications of the new wrinkle, muttering to himself as he cursed their luck.

  He stubbed out the cigarette and moved to the bed, where he programmed his phone to wake him in two hours. He’d pulled many all-nighters when he’d been in the field, but he’d been younger then. The years had taught him the value of being rested.

  Synthe leaned back against the headboard and closed his eyes, trying to shut off the barrage of thoughts. He’d grown accustomed to sleeping sitting up, and now couldn’t do so any other way.

  Yet another example of how his decades of service in the Mossad had affected him.

  He switched off the bedside lamp and looked at his watch. Three forty-five.

  It was going to be a long day.

  CHAPTER 21

  Steven sat slumped over his laptop in the arrival area as though waiting for an early morning train. The terminal had a fair number of people in it: mostly shifty-looking loiterers and the late night fringes of society that frequented train and bus stations. The few police patrolling seemed to be oblivious of him. That made sense – it was too soon, and they hadn’t actually broken any laws. Although there was always the chance that someone would pull some strings and get an All Points Bulletin issued, it seemed highly unlikely if their intentions were to remain a secret. Besides which, Steven was barely recognizable now that he was wearing a hooded sweatshirt pulled over his NY Yankees baseball cap. The ensemble was completed with nondescript black cargo pants, and he could have passed for early thirties, or even younger, at a glance. The attire was miles from what a cryptologist or a technology CEO would reasonably wear.

  Steven glanced up as he sensed Natalie’s return and ventured a fatigued grin. She looked like she’d just awoken from eight solid hours of rest, dazzling in a multicolored lightweight sweater and jeans. The wig was now pulled into a pony tail, and the change in her appearance from the goth-princess he’d met two mornings ago was striking. It was hard to believe this was the same woman, but the intense violet eyes were unmistakable.

  She appraised him as he tapped at the computer’s keypad.

  “Any progress?”

  “I entered the photos from the basilica and did a glyph-by-glyph comparison, then recreated the text and fed it into the software.” He touched the s
creen. “It’s processing, after which I’ll need to translate it from whatever it spits out in Latin.”

  “How long do you think it will take?” Natalie asked.

  “Maybe an hour – it will check for all permutations, which could turn out to be a lot. No way of knowing until it tells me it’s done. If I didn’t have the program, it would be weeks.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Could you get me a cup of very strong coffee? I’m not used to staying up all night, and I’m starting to drift…”

  Natalie nodded. “Relegated to the coffee girl. Fine,” she teased.

  “You can sit here for a while and stare at the blank screen telling you the task is only fifteen percent complete while I go get some,” he offered.

  “Know what? I’ll take you up on that. It will probably do you good to stretch your legs. Do you mind?” she asked.

  “Not at all. Nothing will happen with the software until it’s done, and that will be a while. You want anything? Java? Muffin?”

  “Please, no pet names.” She studied Steven’s blank expression. “Sorry. I’m a little punchy too. I was just playing. Sure, I’d love some coffee. Lots of cream, three sugars, please.”

  Steven wordlessly handed her the PC, careful not to kick the power cord from the outlet.

  He adjusted his hat. “Hot, white and sweet. Got it.” His eyes twinkled. “See? I can play too.”

  Without waiting for a response, he departed in search of liquid sustenance. Nothing was illuminated but the fast food restaurant they’d stopped at earlier. Steven bought two coffees and two croissants, which had just come out of the oven. He looked at the wall clock as he waited for his order. Four-eighteen. Either very late, or very early. It would start getting light around six-thirty, so they had a ways to go until dawn.