“I’m mad as hell, is what I am, but my body’s intact.”
She saw the rage in his eyes, a killing rage. Calm down, calm down. She said, her voice matter-of-fact, “Let’s go get a look at that drone.”
Several cars were pulling over now, a few people getting out to see what was going on, but Nicholas waved them off. He shouted, “Thanks, we’re fine. I’ve called the police.”
Once alone, they walked through the tall grass until they found the crash site.
Nicholas put a hand on her arm. “Stay here. I want to make sure the thing isn’t still capable of shooting or blowing up on us.”
“Nicholas, forget it. I’m the one with the Glock although how a gun would save us might be in question.”
He wanted to argue but gave it up. They slowly circled the drone. The twin engines were still smoking from Mike’s bullets. The drone was slightly tipped, and they saw a bullet hole through the small camera mounted inside the base of the fuselage.
Nicholas said, “Whoever was driving the drone can’t see anything now, not with a bullet in the camera. Great shot, Mike.”
“Great piece of luck. Think maybe it has a self-destruct mechanism?”
“It could, and wouldn’t that be diabolical?” He poked about a bit, then straightened. “Okay, it looks pretty dead to me. We need to take this thing apart.”
“I hope it’ll lead us to whoever tried to kill us.” Saying the words aloud spiked his rage. She saw it, grabbed him around his neck and squeezed him tight. He buried his face in her hair, felt a small shard of glass and felt more rage pound through him. Then her voice, light, nearly laughing, “Now, Nicholas, don’t forget, it’s been more than a week since our last adventure, so don’t go all mushy on me.”
He drew a deep, calming breath and pressed his forehead to hers. “Yes, you’re right. Now, I have no intention of putting this thing in the boot and driving it down to London. I’m calling Penderley. He can handle it.”
Mike listened with half an ear as he explained what had happened to Penderley. She knew the fallow field they stood in would soon be overrun by a Scotland Yard forensic team, or a drone team. Was there any such thing yet?
Who was trying to kill them? How did they know where they’d be? How did they even know she and Nicholas had poked the hornet’s nest?
We’re being watched.
She pulled out her phone. Her last call was two days ago; she’d spoken to her parents, telling them she and Nicholas had arrived at Old Farrow Hall. That was it.
Nicholas punched off. “Penderley is sending a special group to deal with the drone.” He stared off into space a moment and said slowly, as if reading her mind, something he did entirely too often, “Whoever sent this drone has access to us, our phones, the computers. How else would they know to send something after us when we were only assigned the case this morning?”
“I haven’t made any calls since we arrived. But you have, Nicholas, to Savich, then to your dad, an hour ago.”
“Bloody hell, you’re right. Someone could have tapped the phones at the Home Office, no other way to find us.”
He took the battery out of his mobile, tossed it toward the car. Mike followed suit. They walked a good distance from the smoking drone. Twenty steps later, he said quietly, “Mike, we have to assume whoever is behind these attacks can only hear when we’re directly communicating, so we’ll accept everything electronic is compromised. Not only keystrokes, they might very well have audio, as well.”
“We’re talking someone with a lot of money, probably a lot of power, as well, Nicholas. That drone—how much do you think it cost to build?” She felt her neck again, no more blood. She pulled another small shard of glass from her hair.
He raised his hand, worked another piece out of her ponytail. “We’re going to make sure we can’t be overheard discussing this from now on.”
She leaned up, whispered, “Let’s have meetings in the park like spies.”
He pictured Hyde Park, the two of them huddled on a bench on the banks of the Serpentine. “Good idea. Now, as I see it, the problem is, if they’ve penetrated the Security Services’ firewalls, they can certainly access the CCTV and watch where we go. Your glasses are crooked.”
“But why are they so scared of us? I mean, they came after us within two hours.” She took off her glasses, blew on the lenses, wiped them off on her shirt, straightened each temple, set them back on her nose. “Okay, good?”
He cupped her chin in his palm, studied her face, her ratty ponytail. “Yes, glasses straight, perfect. Do you think our reputation has preceded us?”
She snorted, then frowned. “Well, you did save the president’s life—that was pretty big news—and we know it leaked out that you saved Washington, D.C., from a Godzilla-size tsunami. You think maybe someone’s trying to get even, for whatever reason?”
That didn’t sound right, but Nicholas didn’t say anything. The people involved in orchestrating those two affairs were all dead.
Nicholas walked around the drone, studying it, while Mike studied the sky. Nothing, only rolling white clouds.
“Nicholas, why? What could we possibly know this soon? You know this could happen again.”
He whispered in her ear, “Because whoever is behind this doesn’t even want us nibbling around the edges. We know now for certain my father’s been hacked, which means all the Security Services have been, as well. How deep does it go?”
Mike whispered back, “Their operating system is MATRIX, installed worldwide. Are you assuming MATRIX has been completely compromised? Okay, go with me on this. If yes, then it’s possible, isn’t it, that our FBI servers have been hacked?”
He nodded, continued in a near whisper, “Which means when I spoke to Savich and Sherlock this morning, I could have compromised them, as well. I’m going to have to find a secure method of communication with them, with the team.”
She stared down at the still-smoking drone. “Nicholas, we haven’t been hacked, more like we’ve been infiltrated. Who can breach the phones and computers of the most secretive organizations in the world?”
“Like you said, someone with a lot of money, someone powerful, someone who can infiltrate MATRIX.” He took her right hand in his, ran a finger over the callus between her thumb and forefinger, built up spending years on the range. “Remind me to thank your dad when I meet him. You shoot brilliantly.”
“That’s what I tell my dad. When I was a kid, we’d trek off into the wilderness to this remote range and shoot for hours until I was so tired I could barely hold my shotgun. Then he started me on rifles. Finally, I graduated to handguns. I got pretty good. He loved to show me off to his friends. And don’t change the subject.”
Before he could answer her, a distant siren grew louder.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Voynich manuscript: A mysterious, undeciphered manuscript dating to the 15th or 16th century.
—Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
British Museum
Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury
London
The cab pulled to the curb with a screech, throwing Roger Bannen forward. He looked at his watch. He was late. He quickly paid the driver and bounded out of the cab without a receipt. He’d deal with the expense report later.
He ran into the building and took the grand stairs into the foyer at a dead run. He hit his shoulder on the door as he entered, dropped his notebook, and tripped over his brolly trying to pick it up. He ignored the amused looks from the people nearby.
Would this day ever go right? He’d woken late—not his fault, his alarm clock was on the fritz—his coffeemaker had spit grounds into the carafe instead of coffee, and he’d stepped on the cat’s tail to get at the pot before it boiled over on the floor. He felt like a fool, he, one of the Sun’s best reporters. Well, he could be if he didn’t screw up. Maybe.
He gathered his things, looked up, and cursed once. The hall was full of reporters, some talking on the
ir mobiles, others fiddling with the cameras and lights. What were they all doing here? This was his chance to get the boss’s notice. He had no idea what the topic of the press briefing was, only what Molly the stringer, a former girlfriend, had told him when she’d called his desk. “British Museum, rare discovery, special briefing, Rog, get yourself there at noon, could be a big story.”
Bless Molly’s heart. But how was he going to get an exclusive, with everyone else already here? And then it hit him. Everyone else had received the same call. From Molly? His Molly? Bollocks.
Roger pushed his way toward the middle of the reporters so he could see the head of the antiquities department, Dr. Persepolis Wynn-Jones, Persy, Roger had heard his friends called him. He was at the top of the stairs talking to a pretty young woman beside him, holding a laptop to her chest. Intern, he thought, dismissing her. So where were the big guns? Still, whatever this was all about, Dr. Wynn-Jones was a friend of Roger’s mother, so maybe he’d be willing to share a special tidbit with Roger after the briefing.
He fell in beside a few reporters he knew. “What’s this all about, you lot?”
Three heads turned, a few grins, a few frowns. Todd Benedict, who believed himself to be blindingly brilliant, shook his head. “No one knows anything, Rog. How’s, ah, tricks at the Sun?”
“All’s well, all’s well.” You toffee-nosed ass. “You still a stand out at the Guardian? Hey, maybe we could grab a pint after.” If he still had a bleeding job at the end of this day of disasters. “Oh, here we go.”
Dr. Wynn-Jones made his way to the landing, tapped the microphone three times to gather attention, then smiled at the gathered crowd.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice. We have a very exciting announcement, and we will be passing out supplemental papers to give you the full background on our newest find. Trust me when I say it’s capital.” Roger watched Persy’s eyes land on him, and Persy broke into a grin and nodded to him. Roger smiled back at the crazy old corker. Crazy like a fox, but still.
Dr. Wynn-Jones studied the hungry faces a moment, knowing they’d heard fantastical things about this briefing but had no idea. He wasn’t going to disappoint today. The library often made discoveries, but this one was going to change the world, he could feel it in his bones.
“It’s very exciting, very exciting indeed. As many of you know, we are sometimes very lucky in our discoveries, and today’s news is no different. I am talking about an inestimable treasure, one we will be spending a significant amount of time and energy on going forward. And so, I present to you Dr. Isabella Marin, our very own Oxford doctor of cryptology and our foremost expert in the Voynich manuscript. She will present our most exciting discovery. Dr. Marin? The floor is yours.” And he gave her a royal bow.
The Voynich? Roger couldn’t believe it. He stared at the young woman he’d believed of no importance. Well, she was as beautiful as a bloody foreign princess, dark sloe eyes, gold complexion. She had something to do with the Voynich? What had she found? Roger couldn’t believe his luck.
Dr. Isabella Marin squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and told her heaving stomach to calm down, it wouldn’t do to honk all over the mass of reporters staring up at her. She knew her boss was having the time of his life—put him in front of a microphone and an audience, and he positively bloomed. It was said, not within his hearing, of course, that he’d never met a microphone he didn’t like. But now he was giving her a chance to make her name in both the cryptology and antique manuscript world. Granted, she was presenting the find, but his presence beside her showed substance and gravitas to the world.
Still, there were so many cameras. Had any of these reporters ever even heard of the Voynich?
I hope this works, mixing truth and lies.
Her boss waved her to the mic. She walked out onto the stage, her laptop still clutched as tight as a newborn to her chest, and wondered for the twentieth time if she should have worn panty hose as a sign of respect. But then the mic was in her hand and the people in the front row were staring at her and she started to talk.
“Good morning. As many of you know, last year, the Voynich manuscript was stolen from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University in the United States. Despite worldwide efforts, the Voynich is still lost. Not its contents, of course. Yale published the manuscript in its entirety online. But losing the precious original pages is a tragedy.
“All is not lost, though.” She leaned close in to the microphone, ready to share a secret. “Last month I found a quire of papers stuffed inside a manuscript in the upstairs library loft of the British Museum. This is not an unusual occurrence. It is a library, after all, and old paper is our business.”
Laughs, chuckles, and she relaxed a fraction. It was her boss’s phrasing—old paper is our business—something he was fond of saying all the time. He beamed at her, and she knew she’d pleased him, using his joke in her press-conference debut. She cleared her throat, continued in the same confiding voice.
“The quire, like the rest of the Voynich, is written in a language or a code that hasn’t yet been translated, even by experts in the cryptology field. Alas, that includes me.”
A few laughs, and she was tempted to tell the truth, but no, she had to keep to her script, mix the lies and truth.
She said, “When I found the pages, I immediately set out to determine if they were real.”
The reporters leaned forward as one. But one, a dark-haired gent in the middle, was staring at her as if she was about to announce the secrets of creation.
Isabella placed her laptop on a chair, hit a button, and the lights dimmed a bit. The huge screen behind her lit up with a series of photographs of the discovered pages.
“After extensive testing using radiocarbon dating, we have determined the papers I found are indeed a part of Beinecke manuscript 408—known colloquially as the Voynich manuscript, because of its rediscovery in 1912 at the Jesuit college of Frascati near Rome, by Wilfred Voynich. The quire in question is labeled as pages fifty-nine to sixty-four of the manuscript. These pages have been lost for centuries. And that, my friends, is not all.”
The reporters knew immediately Dr. Isabella Marin was about to drop a bomb on them. Roger sat forward now along with the rest of them, never taking his eyes off her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Isabella paused another moment for effect, then said, “Being able to study these pages in-depth for the past few weeks has reinforced my belief that the indecipherable language in which the Voynich is written in is not unbreakable, as scholars before me believe.
“It is now my opinion the Voynich is written in an idioglossic language, that is, a language common to areas where only a few people live, where, in isolation, they develop their own language and words. But I believe the Voynich’s idioglossic language is even more specific. It is cryptophasic, that is, a language developed between twins, commonly known as twin talk. This is why, so far, no one had been able to read the Voynich. Over the years, it has been approached as a code, when in fact, it is a unique language.
“Are we to believe the person or persons who wrote the Voynich were twins who communicated in twin talk? That they wrote and shared the Voynich between themselves, their own private book? Very possible. And I wonder, can any set of twins read the Voynich? The answer is obviously no, or the manuscript would, over time, have been seen by twins and read. But this hasn’t happened. So very special twins only.
“Which twins? From a specific place? From a unique line? I don’t know. In any case, this is my working theory.
“It’s been speculated in the past that the book is some sort of herbal. If this is the case, perhaps these twins wrote experiments in it. Why did they write in a language no one but they themselves could understand? An excellent question to which we have no answers. Yet.
“More important, is there a key to help decipher it?” She nodded, waited, waited. “I have found the key.”
There was a buzzing of
voices.
“The key turns out to be a single page that was with the missing quire.” She held up one finger. “Only a single page. Here it is.” She pressed a button, and the slide on the screen switched. To the audience, it was more of the same nonsensical writing. But Isabella smiled and pointed to lines of text. “There is a repeating pattern here, which lines up perfectly with the lettering in the book. This page is labeled seventy-four, and, it is the only page of the Voynich manuscript physically cut from the book. Page seventy-four is from the astrological section and has a few new drawings never seen before. I’ve verified the quire and page seventy-four is a match to the original Voynich. Why was page seventy-four cut out?
“I believe it was cut out because it provides the clues needed for non-twins to translate the Voynich. It is still not completely clear to me, but I am working hard to figure it out.” She paused again and looked out over the fascinated faces, her heartbeat picking up. She leaned forward—sell it, sell it—and deepened her voice.
“Today begins my hunt to find the special twins able to read the Voynich. With our current communications technology, I believe I will succeed. And when I have, I will introduce these twins to the world, and they will stand before you and read the Voynich.”
She paused, drew a deep breath. “I do understand from the pages that they must be reunited with the original manuscript, the one stolen last year from the Beinecke.” Did that sound too crazy? I hope not. I couldn’t very well say the pages told me so.
“I am begging those who stole the Voynich to return it. Here, to me, at the British Museum. Please.”
She looked out over the faces, many of them talking low on their cell phones, many others simply writing. Did I convince you? Did you believe me? Or do you believe I’m a fake?
“Now, I’m going to turn this over to Dr. Webster Hoag, distinguished professor of chemistry at Princeton and a leading expert on manuscript radiocarbon dating. We have worked closely with Dr. Hoag, and he will now explain how we verified the provenance of the quire we discovered. Dr. Hoag?”
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