The Voynich Cypher

CHAPTER 9

Steven opened the door to his offices for Natalie, fumbling with the baguettes and coffee while Natalie walked into the building, clutching a leather bag.

Gwen Peabody rose from her desk and briskly approached Steven, taking the bread from him and glancing at the new female arrival.

“Hullo,” Gwen chirped at her.

Natalie only offered a nod. Steven glanced around the red brick interior of the old building, which had been gutted and converted into a single large workspace. The section nearest the entrance housed a reception area and a group of computer stations, arranged in a semi-circle on the polished concrete floor and occupied by the other residents of the office. All three now turned to regard Steven.

“Hello, gang,” Steven said. He turned to Natalie. “Ms. Twain, I’d like you to meet Gwen Peabody; she’s my office manager and is responsible for anything that goes right in my life on a day-to-day basis.”

“Nice to meet you, Gwen,” Natalie said. “Natalie Twain.”

Gwen made the connection instantly. “Ah, immediate relative, I would guess, of Professor Winston Twain. His…daughter?” She appraised Natalie more closely. “Or granddaughter?”

“The very same. His daughter,” Natalie answered.

“He called our office the other day. How is your father?”

“At peace,” Natalie said cryptically.

“Professor Twain passed away a few days ago, Gwen,” Steven said softly, and then looked to his three other employees.

“Oh,” Gwen said, deflated, and at a momentary loss of words. “I’m…so sorry.”

“Thank you,” Natalie replied.

Steven turned to his team, who were watching him expectantly.

“Ben Walker, Will Donahue and Sophie Lipton,” he introduced.

Sophie, a stout black woman of twenty-six, whose fondness for Italian pastry was clearly evident, smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Pleased to meet you, Natalie.”

“Likewise,” Natalie replied good-naturedly.

Ben smiled and said, “We’re the tragically underpaid and perennially overworked elves who make the software work. I’m Ben, and that’s Will.” He nodded his head in the direction of Will, who was busily typing on his keypad even as he glanced at Natalie in acknowledgement. Ben was tall and lanky, even seated, and had a scar running from his forehead down to his lower lip. Will was thin and pale, with a three day growth of sparse beard, and iPod headphones blaring metal music in his ears.

“Nice to meet everyone,” Natalie said.

“Natalie, let’s step into my office; this way, please…” Steven moved ahead of her to a room at the far end of the cavernous work area.

Natalie strode behind him, still holding her soft leather satchel.

Gwen looked to Natalie. “May I take that for you?”

“Thank you, I’m fine,” Natalie said and then followed Steven into this office, closing the door behind them.

Natalie took a seat in front of Steven’s desk. For a moment there was only silence, as he reclined in his chair and sipped his coffee. Steven and Natalie regarded each other. Natalie’s gaze was impassive, inscrutable.

Steven put the cup to the side and folded his arms while leaning forward in his seat. “All right, Ms. Twain. You have my attention. Why is my life in danger, and how can I help you?”

Natalie lifted her satchel and placed it on Steven’s desk.

“Call me Natalie. Please.” She paused, appraising him, and then continued. “I–I’m not sure where to start, so I’ll just begin with my father’s death. I believe that he was murdered by a man named Morbius Frank. Dr. Morbius Frank. Does the name mean anything to you?” Natalie said.

Steven searched his mental rolodex, but nothing flipped in terms of recognition. “No. Should it?”

“He is, aside from being behind my father’s murder, a businessman. A businessman, adventurer, self-described archeologist and philanthropist, and a billionaire. A trust fund baby to an oil magnate dynasty — one of the largest in the United Kingdom.”

Steven nodded. “I don’t recognize the name, but I get the point. He’s rich and powerful…and you think he killed—”

“Two weeks ago, Frank funded an operation for my father to obtain a religious artifact which Frank had learned was intrinsic to the Voynich Manuscript. I know you recognize that.”

Steven leaned back and his demeanor changed. “Of course. It’s only the holy grail of cryptology. But the Voynich’s been at Yale for decades. What relic could possibly be connected with it? I know everything about it, and there’s nothing but the manuscript and mountains of speculation as to how to crack the code — something nobody has ever done.”

“It’s something that my father said could help decipher the Voynich. He believed it was the key, in fact, to a mystery that dates back six hundred years.”

Steven studied Natalie quietly, but inside, his heart had just shifted gears into overdrive; his normal sinus rhythm shot from sixty to a hundred in just a few brief moments. “Go on, Natalie.”

“The artifact is known as the Holy Scroll of the Abbey of St. Peter at Abbotsbury in Dorset, England. Have you heard of the place?”

Steven nodded. “Heard of it? I visited the Abbey on a tour ten years ago. But there was no sacred relic there that I can remember. Are you saying this artifact is in the Abbey? I’m still not following the logic.”

“It was there, deep in the hidden catacombs beneath the grounds. But no more,” Natalie said. “The Holy Scroll was liberated two weeks ago.”

Steven shook his head. “Ah. So it was stolen. And your father had something to do with this?”

“Liberated,” Natalie corrected.

“Liberated. Sure, okay. And this ‘Holy Scroll’ was ‘liberated’…by your father? I would have imagined that he wasn’t a particularly, er, nimble man, given his years…”

“He didn’t do it himself, but I know that he and Dr. Frank arranged it. But what’s important is that my father retained possession of the Scroll on the understanding that Frank would be able to share the information it contained once it was decrypted.”

“And you believe your father was murdered because Frank wanted the Scroll for himself. Did Frank steal it after killing your dad?”

“No, he didn’t.”

Steven considered this, the hair on the nape of his neck prickling. “Then where is this holy artifact, and how do you know so much about all this?”

“I have it,” Natalie said, answering part of the question. She glanced at her bag.

Steven studied Natalie, and then his eyes slowly moved to the satchel. Natalie had his full and complete attention.

“Did Professor Twain…your father…have time to analyze this Holy Scroll?” Steven asked quietly.

“No, but…” Natalie hesitated for a moment.

“No, but what?” Steven persisted.

Natalie opened the satchel, removed a piece of paper and handed it to Steven. Steven took it and opened it.

The paper was the letter that Steven had sent to Winston Twain a year before, articulating his theory on the origin of the Voynich Manuscript.

Steven perused the document and a chill ran down his spine.

The letter was partially smeared with blood.

The blood of the late Professor Winston Twain.

Steven studied the letter in silence, and then squinted as he tried to make out a handwritten note that the Professor had scribbled on the left hand side of the letter. He read it aloud: “Theory wrong, but close. Call Cross, have a chat.”

Steven looked up at Natalie. “Then he hadn’t ignored my letter after all.”

“No,” Natalie said. “He didn’t. I found the letter under his head. When he died…” Natalie paused, and swallowed hard. “When he died, his head collapsed on the desk, and your letter was under it. The coroner said he died of a massive aortic aneurism, and that he probably broke his nose when it hit the desk. That’s why—”

“Yes, I understand,” Steven said and looked at the bloodstained letter again. “But now I’m really puzzled. You keep saying your father was murdered by Frank, and yet you just described a congenital defect as the cause of death. Those don’t add up. Either he was killed, or he died of natural causes. Which is it?”

“I believe that he was being tortured when the aneurism ruptured. The coroner also found some unexplained abrasions on his hands, but ultimately said they were inconclusive. I don’t think they were. I believe Frank lost patience and came for the Scroll,” Natalie insisted.

Steven sighed. “You realize that’s completely impossible to prove, right? I mean, you could also theorize that the devil was having a drink with him when his aorta burst. It doesn’t make it so. I’m not trying to be difficult…”

“I can appreciate your skepticism. But it doesn’t change my opinion.” She gestured to the letter in Steven’s hands. “I wanted you to see this first because you need to know that my father respected your skills,” she said.

“I’ll take that as a high compliment. But none of this really sheds any light on whether your father was able to study the Scroll and make heads or tails of it,” Steven said matter-of-factly.

“I’m sure he didn’t. My father and I were close, and he hadn’t called to tell me of any significant discovery. If he found something new about any of his projects, he would call me immediately. He was like a child. Always excited, always wanting to share with me first.”

Steven offered a sympathetic smile. “I can understand that.”

She gave an almost imperceptible nod of thanks.

“How did you come by the Scroll?” Steven asked.

“He gave it to me before he died,” Natalie said. “He insisted that I safeguard it as soon as he had it in his possession.” She stared at the Picasso lithograph on the wall behind Steven’s head. “It’s almost as if he knew someone would be coming after him sooner or later.”

Steven frowned.

“What?” Natalie asked, noticing the change in his expression.

“If your father and Frank had an agreement to share the Scroll, why would he kill him? Assuming your torture theory is right.”

“Because my father, for all of his failings, was in the end a religious man. He was torn — his academic side wanted to decrypt it, but he didn’t want to do anything overtly sacrilegious or damaging to those who shared his faith. I know it caused him a great deal of anxiety. Once he’d seen the Scroll I think his conscience got the better of him, and he told Frank that the information contained in the Scroll was best left undiscovered,” Natalie said. “My father told me that he was going to sell his entire retirement portfolio of stocks and bonds, as well as his summer home in Aspen, and give Frank back his money so there could never be contentions that Frank had any claim on the Scroll.”

Steven let out an exasperated sigh. “Let’s say I completely buy all this and agree that this Frank is a monster. The obvious question is, how can I help you? What do I have to do with any of this, other than having written a letter even I forgot about? And how do I even know that the Scroll, which I’ve never heard of until you mentioned it, has anything to do with the Voynich?”

Natalie silently extracted a battered container from her bag, easing off the lid as she regarded Cross from across the desk.

“My father did describe how the Scroll was connected to the Voynich,” Natalie said at last.

Steven nodded indulgently. “Okay, I’ll bite. We’ve come this far. What did he say was the link?”

Natalie carefully took out a sheaf of parchments from the canister that were clearly hundreds of years old. He’d seen enough medieval documents in his time to recognize the signs of antiquity, as well as the distinctive scent of centuries past.

“My father told me that the Holy Scroll was one of the missing chapters of the Voynich Manuscript, Dr. Cross,” Natalie said slowly. “Quire 18, to be precise.”

The room seemed to spin for a few moments as Steven took in the details of the dog-eared parchments in Natalie’s hands. His eyes roamed over the ancient canister, then returned to the quire. This was impossible. It was akin to someone walking in off the street and unfurling a lost Rembrandt. The missing section of the Voynich had disappeared early in its life, along with another chapter, quire 16, and even though there were vague rumors of forbidden knowledge that periodically surfaced when one studied the history of the document, nobody had ever seen the lost pages. Through the ages, speculation as to their contents was sparse and often contradictory. They were phantoms, nothing more.

“Quire 18…are you…are you sure this is what your father told you?”

“Yes,” Natalie said. “He put its date at around 1450.”

Steven couldn’t believe his ears.

In front of him was the lynchpin — the key — to solving one of the greatest mysteries the world had ever known.