The Voynich Cypher

PROLOGUE

Moonlight bathed the Abbey in an otherworldly glow as serpentine tendrils of foggy mist blanketed the countryside. The medieval buildings in the compound were blue-gray in the eerie lunar luminescence, and the encroaching vegetation appeared black instead of green. The Abbey was silent, with many hours remaining until activity on the grounds would begin, and only the dim illumination from a single incandescent bulb housed in an ancient rusted lamp above the massive stone entry hinted that the structures were occupied.

A dog barked in the distance, its throaty voice muffled by the thick haze.

The scarred brick well at the edge of the Abbey grounds, worn by the centuries and long since obsolete, blended with the landscape. But the guard who leaned against it, armed with a SIG Sauer 228 pistol, seemed out of place.

The crumbling aperture was surrounded by overgrown shrubs and weeds, rendering it virtually invisible. The sentry was dressed in dark army surplus camouflage pants and jacket, doing his lonesome duty on the latest of thousands of uneventful nights. He’d grown lax over the years, but in his defense, there was little to be actively vigilant against, save for an errant fox or badger that occasionally strayed into the vicinity. Even then the man didn’t bother to shoo the furry intruders away.

Live and let live.

If a more boring or uneventful posting existed, he’d never heard of it. Still, a lifetime of indoctrination had molded him for guarding the Abbey’s forbidden secrets, and that’s what he would do, even if he privately thought it was pointless.

His instructions were simple: stand ready throughout the night at this hidden entrance to the Abbey’s subterranean chambers. While part of him questioned why it needed to be guarded, and what, if anything, it required to be guarded against, he knew that if he was remiss in his simple function he would be punished in a brutal and medieval manner — some things hadn’t changed over the eons. His first duty was to God, and after God, to the Order. And the Order had wisdom in its directives, even if he didn’t fully apprehend them. His role was to do as he was told, which is why he was posted in the middle of nowhere, waiting for nothing to happen, just as it hadn’t happened for centuries.

The edict to watch and wait came from the very top, so every night for almost a decade he’d maintained his vigil, performing his duty at the eleventh-century Benedictine monastery without question, just as his many predecessors had done before him.

Wearing black cargo pants, rubber-soled paratrooper boots and a light black windbreaker, the intruder moved silently through the shrubbery — virtually invisible in the darkness. The perimeter motion detectors had been easily de-activated; the intruder had known where they were hidden, as well as their operating frequency.

The guard had finally settled into his usual sitting position on a weathered stone bench facing the brick opening and was surreptitiously listening to music on an iPod, tapping his fingers in time to the rhythm. He registered nothing as the intruder stealthily approached from the rear, a hypodermic syringe clenched in a gloved hand. At the final moment, sensing a presence, he attempted to spin around, but it was too late — the needle had penetrated his neck, its payload delivered with an abrupt depression of the plunger.

The man’s pupils lost focus and took on a glassy stare as he slipped painlessly into unconsciousness, his head almost tenderly supported by the intruder as he slumped to the ground. After glancing around to ensure the scuffle hadn’t alerted anyone from the Abbey, the intruder closed the guard’s lids, ensuring his eyes wouldn’t dry out during the hour he’d be in dreamland. Even after the surprise attack the man appeared at peace, other than having a faint expression of astonishment.

The intruder considered his inert form. I don’t envy you the headache you’ll have when you wake up.

Satisfied the guard was out cold, the intruder extracted a bundle from a form-fitted nylon backpack and clipped an anodized black rappelling wire to the well’s sturdy iron cross-post, and after ducking into the brush to retrieve a rucksack with equipment in it, crawled over the crumbling lip and dropped sixty feet into the inky darkness below.

The intruder dropped down the shaft and swung into a passageway that punctuated the end of the sheer descent, alighting soundlessly on the worn stone floor of the subterranean passageway before quickly scanning the area.

Hundreds of skeletons held silent vigil in cavities along the narrow crypt, all facing the spot where the new arrival stood; a phalanx of mute sentries to voicelessly witness the actions of anyone foolhardy enough to breach the stillness of the sacred burial space. The specters of the thousand-year-old remains generated no reaction in the masked figure, who was more than passingly familiar with the many faces of death. While the grim reaper wasn’t exactly a friend, he certainly wasn’t a stranger to the black-clad prowler, who’d ended the lives of enough miscreants to defy recollection.

The intruder stepped carefully past the groups of long-dead clergy, compelled forward by a more pressing mission than sightseeing in one of purgatory’s antechambers.

Tracker 1x24 NV night-vision goggles rendered the darkness of the clammy chamber irrelevant; now the blackness was bathed in a greenish glow, with the level of detail similar to when having the lights on — had there been any lights — the only illumination would have come from the row of wall-mounted iron torch holders, with black smudges of gritty soot marring the stone ceiling above them. The departed had little use for modern conveniences such as electricity, and the old ways were still the best in the hall of the dead.

The only sounds other than the draft wafting through the corridors were the occasional rat scurrying about the bones and the trespasser’s muffled footsteps moving stealthily towards the forbidden destination — the rumored ‘Scroll Chamber’. Preparation for the early morning’s adventure had included memorizing the layout of the surviving Abbey buildings and also the maze of catacombs beneath. The location of the Chamber was exactly one hundred twenty-two yards from where the abandoned water-shaft offered ventilation and egress — a fact that was pivotal now that the sanctity of the hidden recesses had been breached.

The most difficult part of the operation would take place at the Chamber — the advance intelligence had been clear. It would be guarded, both by a man outside its door and another within. A frontal assault was out of the question; the slightest slip and the interior sentry would sound the alarm, even if the exterior guard had been dispatched. No, a better approach would be required to achieve entry into the supposedly impenetrable room, although it too would require no small amount of luck to succeed.

Careful study of the almost impossible-to-locate ancient blueprints had provided the clue for an alternative means of accessing the Chamber — one that the guards and the friars were likely unaware of.

It would be obvious momentarily whether the strategy was a winner, or a dead-end.

The Scroll Chamber was a small room, engineered to exacting measurements, and constructed entirely of stone blocks painstakingly hewn from a nearby quarry. Four meters by three, with not a centimeter of variation anywhere, its furnishings were modest, with only a dilapidated stool and a hand-carved stone table cleaved from the wall nearest the access door. Resting on this rustic ledge was a single cylindrical canister, twelve inches in height, resembling nothing so much as a coffee thermos — with the exception that common beverage containers were rarely constructed of medieval amalgams of oak and alabaster, embossed with crude Christian symbols and dire warnings in Latin.

The only occupant of the room was a tall man, also in the camouflage garb favored by the Abbey’s protectors, whose immobile form was illuminated by a tiny battery-powered camping light he’d positioned on the table’s edge. He was napping; his head drooped on his chest, and occasional rumbling snores disrupted the stillness. He was a young man, no more than twenty-five, heavily-bearded, with a scar on his forehead in the shape of a cross. This guard was also armed with a SIG Sauer automatic pistol — an incongruous anachronism given the nature of the room and the Abbey’s monastic purpose.

A crudely rendered stone grid near the ceiling shifted upwards an inch at a time, six feet away from the slumbering man’s head. It weighed over a hundred pounds, and yet it slid silently into the dark cavity behind it without so much as a scrape against the ancient stones of the Chamber. The slumbering guard hadn’t stirred.

The intruder crawled out of the hand-carved tunnel and dropped lightly to the Chamber floor, pausing in a crouch, studying the crucifixus on the guard’s forehead before scrutinizing his eyelids, watchful for any sign of awareness.

Satisfied that the man wasn’t an immediate threat, the silent trespasser’s focus turned to the canister on the table, now only four feet away. The container was distinctly unimpressive considering what it purportedly held. It was almost a disappointment that the intelligence on its safeguarding was correct; no complex Indiana Jones-like counterweights to contend with, no medieval combination locks to breach. Nothing, except for the droning guard — the first priority if the mission was to be fruitful.

The intruder approached on catlike feet, another syringe at the ready.

A loose flagstone beneath a delicately-placed boot jarred the silence. The guard jolted awake with a start. The intruder lunged forward with the needle, but this guard was faster than the one by the well; he dodged the attempt at his neck and spun towards his assailant as he shook off the grogginess of sleep. He fumbled for his pistol, but the intruder snap-kicked his hand, audibly breaking the bones. The guard howled in pain and, not as adept in close-quarters combat as his attacker, he swung ineffectually with his good hand. The intruder dodged the awkward assault and delivered three successive blows to the tall man’s solar-plexus, trachea and jaw. It was the throat-blow that stopped the guard mid-stride, and he staggered back against the door with a thud before crumpling to the floor.

The sound of his exclamation and body slamming against the heavy door alerted the other guard, and the rattle of keys scrabbling at the lock echoed in the now-still Chamber, followed by the guard’s cries of alarm to the Abbey above.

So much for stealth. The intruder grabbed the canister and hastily shoved it into a streamlined backpack, then reentered the ventilation shaft and wedged the stone grid back into place.

The Chamber door heaved, but the weight of the unconscious guard held it closed. Within moments, more men were struggling with the door, and it grudgingly slid open. A shocked silence accompanied the discovery that the container was missing. The unthinkable had happened after centuries of vigilance — a locked room, a downed guard, and the cylinder gone, but nobody else in the Chamber. How was it possible?

One of the friars spotted a small lump of dust in a corner near the rock ledge that had been home to the Scroll. His trembling finger followed the path of gravity up the wall, ultimately pointing at the stone ventilation port. A cry went up, and half of the men ran out into the adjoining passageway, while the other half rushed to remove the heavy stone grid that barred the coal-black shaft behind it.

The intruder slipped along the crawlspace at high speed on a thin sheet of fiberglass with small rubber wheels mounted on the four corners — a modified low-profile skateboard, its ball-bearing axles rolling soundlessly. A second rappelling cord affixed at the starting point had proved a good idea for the return trip; the intruder traversed the entire length of the eighty-foot tunnel in seconds by pulling the makeshift trolley along the rope. The nylon line had also prevented confusion over which route led back to the catacombs — the shaft split in three directions at a central junction, but following the cord left only one choice.

The clamor of the guards exiting the Chamber reverberated down the passage where the prowler had dropped to the floor from the duct at the far end. Engaging the night-vision goggles again, the intruder easily found the harness dangling from the well’s opening and, with a practiced motion, donned and secured it. The climb back to the top of the narrow shaft took several minutes of fiercely-determined exertion. At the end of the ascent the noise of pursuers fumbling through the hall below inspired a burst of stamina — the final twenty feet were conquered in a few seconds, just as the guards reached the bottom of the shaft, screaming in frustration. Shots echoed from the void, and bullets nicked the interior of the well’s rim, but it was too late.

The nearly-invisible figure ran three hundred yards through the brush until arriving at a clearing — an ancient cemetery, possibly for the Abbey’s service staff, or a long-departed farming family. The intruder glanced back at the Abbey, now glowing with illumination, every window streaming light into the gloom. The frantic roar of car engines starting shattered the still night over the foggy moor.

Perfect. The din would cover the sound of the getaway vehicle — a blacked-out obsidian Moto-Guzzi Stelvio NTX motorcycle hidden, for a fast escape, behind one of the battered headstones.

A gloved finger stabbed the starter button and the big motor cranked to rumbling life. The rider checked the backpack, ensuring it was tightly closed and safely strapped in place. It wouldn’t do to have the canister lost on a trail somewhere in the English wilds.

No, the contents were far too precious to take foolish chances with. If the legends were true, the cylinder held the key to the most important secret ever known — a secret capable of changing the course of history.

Slamming the motorcycle into gear, the black-garbed rider sprayed gravel with the rear wheel and roared off into the night.