The Voynich Cypher

CHAPTER 10

“May I see it, Natalie?” Steven asked, his voice catching on her name.

Natalie handed him the pages across the desk. His hands were steady, thankfully not betraying the surge of adrenaline, as he took them from her.

Steven carefully unfurled the document and spread the sheets on his desktop, which was empty except for a telephone, his computer and a coffee cup full of pencils and pens.

The vellum was in remarkable condition, showing inevitable minor degradation after weathering the ages, but beyond that, in extraordinary shape. He glanced again at the canister. It had done its job admirably, protecting the treasured Scroll from the elements so that, even now, the document was pristine.

The distinctive pseudo-alphabet used in the Voynich was unmistakable — the glyphs were unique. The first pages were filled with the unusual, and yet to Steven, familiar, illustrations that were in keeping with the medicinal character of quire 19. Steven knew most of the quires from memory, having devoted hundreds of hours to study them. The Scroll was definitely consistent with what he would have expected quire 18 to look like, although there was something odd about the drawings; something niggling, but off. He studied them closely, but couldn’t put his finger on what he was sensing. The harder he scrutinized them, the further away the elusive sensation got.

“What do you think?” Natalie walked around the desk and stood by Steven’s side as he pored over each page. He was jarred back into the present by her proximity, and he could detect a subtle aroma of cinnamon emanating from her skin, along with a hint of fragrance, a light floral perfume. Steven realized his focus had slipped even as he simultaneously had a burst of insight: Natalie smelled extremely good.

He shook off the thought. “Based on a cursory look, I’d agree it’s the Voynich. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that, based on the drawings and the calligraphy, not to mention the age. Your father would have recognized it as such instantly. But I’m not seeing anything that’s jumping out at me as earth-shattering, beyond the fact that these pages exist at all,” Steven explained.

“Take your time. There has to be something here,” Natalie pressed.

Steven shook his head. “Why? Why are you so convinced these pages hold some sort of solution to the Voynich, when they appear to be almost exactly like the other two hundred forty pages on display at Yale?” Steven reached over and moved his computer mouse. The large flat screen monitor blinked to life. He typed in a password and selected a folder labeled: ‘Crypto’ and then drilled down until he got to one marked: ‘VMan’. He opened a web browser, and within a few moments the screen was filled with high-resolution images of the pages of the Voynich Manuscript. He quickly went to quire 17 and scrolled through the photos, which looked similar to the pages on his table.

Ignoring Steven’s question, Natalie said, “Quire 17 doesn’t have any nudes in it, and neither does 19. Maybe there’s some significance to the two nude women in 18?”

“Then perhaps there’s some significance wherever they appear in the manuscript. If there is, it’s defied researchers, including me, since the Voynich surfaced. I think that’s a dead-end in terms of something unique to this quire.” Steven stopped and turned to Natalie, their faces only inches apart as they both hunched over the desk. “Why don’t you answer my original question, Natalie? Why are you convinced there’s something special in these pages?”

She held his gaze, then moved a few feet from him — the proximity was too intimate for her to dodge Steven’s reasonable query.

“My father was killed for them, and Frank considered the Scroll to be priceless,” she stated flatly.

He shook his head. “You think. You’re of the opinion he was killed for them. But you don’t know.”

“I know,” Natalie insisted.

Steven decided to let that go. There was nothing to be gained by pointing out the difference between a strongly-held conviction and a provable fact. He knew the tone she had adopted, and logic was the wrong approach if he wanted answers.

“Okay. I believe you’re convinced your father was killed for these pages.”

“Don’t patronize me, Dr. Cross,” Natalie admonished him, pain and anger now evident in her eyes.

“I…look, I’m sorry. We’re getting off on the wrong foot here. What I meant was I believe you. But you came to me because you obviously want my help in figuring out what the significance of these pages is — I didn’t come to you. But if you trust me enough to show me this stolen quire,” he held up a hand to silence her protest at the word ‘stolen’, “you’re going to have to trust me enough to tell me everything you know. Otherwise, I’m fumbling in the dark, and that won’t do either of us any good.” Steven stopped, waiting to see what effect an appeal to reason would have on Natalie.

She hesitated, then looked away. “This was important enough to have armed guards protecting it for hundreds of years in a secret section of the Abbey,” she revealed.

“How do you know that?” Steven demanded.

“I’m not inventing it. My father and Frank discovered a lot about these pages. Enough to pay millions of dollars to get their hands on them,” Natalie concluded.

“Millions? Are you kidding me? They couldn’t give the Voynich away forty years ago. That’s why it was donated to Yale. It had no value, other than as an historical curiosity…”

“That may be, but I can assure you that my father was not a foolish or impulsive man, and his partner in this, Morbius Frank, is as ruthless and cunning as they come. They both believed that they were getting the bargain of a lifetime by paying seven figures for information that enabled them to get their hands on the Scroll. Whatever the Voynich may or may not be worth, it’s clear that there’s something in these pages that’s far bigger than you can imagine.”

“It sounds like you know a lot more about this than what you are letting on, Ms. Tw…Natalie.”

“Here’s what I know. This canister contains a secret so important that even more than five centuries after the Scroll was written it was still being guarded twenty-four hours a day by an elite order of the Catholic Church. Year after year, through wars, famines, plagues, changes in governments and ideologies, the secret was kept, and generations of protectors lived and died,” Natalie explained.

“That sounds far-fetched—”

She held up a hand. “You’ve listened to me so far; hear me out. It’s also pretty far-fetched that an American woman would show up on your Italian doorstep with missing pages of one of your fascinations, isn’t it? I know how unbelievable this must sound, but everything I’m telling you is the truth.”

“Who were these ‘protectors’, Natalie? And how do you know what you claim you know?” Steven asked.

“Just let me finish. They call themselves the Order of the Holy Relic, and they don’t exist in any church records. My father learned of them from Frank, who’d spent decades cultivating contacts and following up on threads and rumors. Eventually, he found a chink in their armor and was able to confirm that the Order was still active. From what my father explained, it had to do with money. Frank met with my father multiple times and revealed to him that, whatever the Scroll was, it was connected to the Voynich, which is where his knowledge came into play. That’s how the uneasy partnership began, with my father vetting all the information Frank had unearthed.”

“You’re serious about all this? A secret society protecting a relic so powerful the world would end if it ever got out, and it winds up in your dad’s lap?” Steven wasn’t trying to be rude, but to say it danced on the edge of credibility was tame.

“Dr. Cross, I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life. My father was the smartest man I’ve ever met, and he was every bit as skeptical as you, but by the end of this, he understood every word I just told you to be completely true.” Natalie reached for the Scroll. “Maybe coming here was a bad idea. I don’t know what I was expecting, but you’re not it. This was a mistake. I’m sorry to have wasted your valuable time,” she said, gathering up the pages.

“Whoa. Wait a second. I’m expressing justifiable skepticism at some unbelievable claims. I don’t think that’s unreasonable. So before you run off the rails here, just give me some time to absorb all this. The parchment appears to be genuine, so that’s a huge plus in favor of your story,” Steven offered.

“It’s all true, and I can tell you that I’m in danger now because of what I know. And yes, I need your help, but I’m also trying to warn you that you’re also at risk because of the letter you wrote to my father. Frank, or whoever he had murder my father, had to have seen it, and my father’s interest in the letter couldn’t have escaped them, given that he was reading it when he was killed.”

“If he was killed,” Steven corrected.

“When he was killed. And that means that you’ll be on a shortlist, because they don’t know where the Scroll is, or what it really contains, or who my father was having help him. So this isn’t just about me or some crazy conspiracy. This is about the same people who killed my father showing up on your doorstep to find out what you do and don’t know. I’m betting Frank’s henchmen don’t ask polite questions and then apologize for disturbing you. These pages were worth millions to them. You really think they won’t torture and kill to get them?” Natalie asked.

“I’m not say—”

“What you should be asking yourself are two questions: how lucky do I feel, and how much do I enjoy breathing? Because, as of now, I’m here to tell you that right or wrong, you’re going to get that visit from Frank’s goons, and it’s not going to be pleasant. You won’t be walking away from it, Dr. Cross. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s true. It didn’t take me long to find you, and it won’t take them long either. You’re wasting time right now that neither of us has,” Natalie stated.

He had watched her as she argued her position, and his gut said she believed what she was saying. Steven was a good judge of character, and she was obviously agitated, and afraid, and needed his help. Or believed she did. Which, in the end, was the same thing — at least for now.

Steven wondered how likely he would be to entertain this sort of outlandish story if the person telling it didn’t also happen to be beautiful, in addition to having presented him with the cryptology equivalent of the Holy Grail. He had to admit that she made a persuasive and passionate case. And she did smell awfully good.

Not to mention that if she was even partially correct, he had just landed in the middle of a shit-storm of epic proportions. If Frank had actually paid millions for the Scroll, it didn’t matter how much of the rest of the story was accurate. People would kill for that kind of money. And Steven didn’t want to test his luck until he knew more.

“Let’s say I believe you, or at least that I buy some crazy bastard might believe the Scroll is worth killing over, if he was nuts enough to pay through the nose to get it. What can I do about any of this? I run a boutique software company, not some sort of professional code-cracking outfit working for the NSA,” he protested.

“I’d like you to do an in-depth study of the pages, and if you spot anything that makes you uneasy or seems like it could contain a clue, tell me. I see you still think this is hysteria, and I agree it sounds crazy, but please, please believe me that the truth is much worse than whatever you’re thinking is plausible. Can you please take some time and really examine the Scroll? Or is there somewhere we can go that nobody knows about, where we’ll be safe while you look it over? I have a villa I’m renting outside of town we can use…” Natalie offered.

Steven mulled over the invitation. There were worse things he could imagine besides spending the day at Natalie’s villa. It wasn’t like he had a ton of work piling up — things had been quiet for the last month, and the team was running on automatic pilot.

Natalie’s cell phone rang. She glanced at the screen and answered it.

“Yes?”

“A car with two ugly-looking goons just parked thirty yards from the front entrance of the office you’re in. They look professional. See if there’s another way out of the building. I’ll meet you after you’re clear.” It was Frederick, her driver.

Natalie hung up and looked around urgently. “Is there a back way out of the building?” she asked Steven. She scrambled to gather up the Scroll and return it to the canister.

“What? Why?” Steven demanded.

“That was my driver. We have about sixty seconds before you learn the hard way that this danger is very real. There are two thugs approaching the front entrance, and they’re not here for computer training.”

Shit. He regarded her eyes. They were steely, with no trace of panic, but also completely earnest.

“There’s a back emergency exit by the storeroom next to this office.”

“Let’s go. Unless you want to stay and discover I wasn’t exaggerating,” Natalie said.

Steven made an instant decision. “Follow me.” He moved to the office door and called out to Gwen, “If anyone comes looking for me, you haven’t seen me for a few days — I’m on vacation until next week in Switzerland, with no way of contacting me until Monday, all right?”

Gwen didn’t miss a beat. “Have a lovely holiday.”

They pushed their way out through the rear exit. Steven called Gwen’s cell as they sprinted through the alley behind the building and out onto the larger street a hundred yards away.

“Gwen. If two men come in looking for me, please be very careful, and very convincing,” he started.

“Yes, sweetheart, of course I can make lunch today. Say at two o’clock?” Gwen replied, sounding breezy, like she had not a care in the world.

“Did they show up?” he asked.

“Yes, of course I can,” she replied.

“Do you need me to call the police?” Steven responded.

“No, can’t chat right now. I have some visitors I need to speak with,” she said.

“So no police?”

“That won’t be necessary. See you at lunch. Ciao!” Gwen said and hung up.

Steven glanced at Natalie.

“You were right. Are my people in any danger?” he demanded.

“I don’t think so. It’s you they’re after. They’ll want to keep low key until they find us, and not arouse any suspicion. It’s just their bad luck they came to kill you when you were on holiday,” Natalie said.

Two minutes later the gray sedan pulled up next to them. Steven and Natalie climbed into the back.

“We’re clean,” she said to the Frederick, and Steven noticed that, even so, the man spent a lot of time studying the rearview mirror as they lost themselves in Florence’s perennial snarl of traffic. “Dr. Cross, this is Frederick. He’s been with the family since I was a child.”

Frederick nodded at him, eyes still darting from the rearview mirror to the side mirrors between glancing at the road in front of them.

Steven didn’t get the feeling he was talkative, so he opted for silence.

Ten minutes later, Steven’s cell phone rang as they rode through Florence’s outskirts on the way to the villa. It was Gwen.

“So, luv, did you rob a bank or chop up some supermodel?” she asked by way of greeting.

“What are you talking about? Are you okay? Who were those guys and what did they want?” Steven pressed.

“They were detectives with the Florence police. They were very interested in your whereabouts, but wouldn’t say anything besides that they needed to speak with you as soon as possible, as they put it, to ‘assist them with their inquiries’. I asked them what inquiries and they gave me some line about not being free to discuss it,” Gwen explained.

“That’s bullshit. I haven’t done anything. Did they show you any ID or leave any contact information?” Steven’s mind was racing over possibilities.

“One of them flashed a shield, but I didn’t have a lot of time to study it. Could have been a traffic warden’s badge for all I know. The one odd thing was that they had to write down a phone number for me to contact them if I spoke with you. If they were police, you’d think they’d have had printed cards…”

“I agree. They’re probably private investigators or something like that,” Steven confirmed. He didn’t feel like speculating with Gwen about what he meant by ‘something like that’.

“Well, they weren’t happy that you’re on holiday for a week, but what can I do about it? I’m just a lowly receptionist. I merely answer phones and clean out rubbish bins, and occasionally bring the high-and-mighty coffee.” Gwen had a typical British dry sense of humor.

“Do me a favor and e-mail me the number and have the lads run it through the crisscross directory to trace it. Get me any info they come up with,” Steven requested.

“What’s this all about, Steven? Seriously.” Gwen’s tone had changed.

“I don’t have any idea, Gwen. That’s what I’m going to try to find out. This morning I was minding my own business, buying bread and coffee, and now I’m darting through back doors…”

“With girls wearing outfits straight out of The Matrix. I know it has to be tough on you, luv. Do try to keep your spirits up through all this,” Gwen observed sweetly.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Steven protested.

“It never is,” Gwen responded. “Call me if you need anything, and enjoy your holiday. Do be careful, and try not to overexert yourself or pull anything. You’re not a young man anymore.”

“Don’t I know it. Thanks for the well wishes. I’ll talk to you later. Let me know what the crew finds out about the number,” Steven fired back.

Natalie regarded him with one eyebrow cocked.

Steven summarized the discussion. She shook her head.

“They got to you awfully fast. I’m not surprised. Everyone’s playing for high stakes here. Now do you believe me?”

“Let’s just say I’m still gathering data, but the scales are tipping in your favor,” Steven acknowledged.

“Hallelujah…” Natalie sighed, rolling her eyes.

Steven sank into the ample seat and fiddled with the center armrest. Natalie didn’t seem to scare easily, he reasoned, and was obviously extremely smart, judging from her oration in his office. He wondered how familiar she was with the Voynich.

“Since your father was one of the leading experts on the Voynich, I’m presuming you know quite a bit about it?” Steven floated as a trial balloon.

“One of? One of the leading experts? He was the expert. Nobody else could hold a candle to him on the topic,” she corrected.

“Sorry. You’re right, of course. But my question is, how up to speed are you?” he persisted.

“What do you want to know?” she asked innocently.

He waited without speaking.

She gave him a neutral look and cleared her throat. “The Voynich Manuscript was discovered, or rather rediscovered, by rare book dealer, Wilfred Voynich, in 1912, here in Italy. He got it from among the possessions of a top Jesuit general who’d recently died. It’s two hundred forty pages written entirely in an unknown language, which most cryptographers agree is some sort of a cypher, although what kind remains unknown. The author remains a mystery, as do the illustrations, which depict unknown species of plants, prescriptions or recipes, nude women and astronomical data. The parchment was carbon-dated to roughly 1430, although it’s possible that the vellum was created then, and it was written at some later point. There are many theories as to who wrote it, and why, most of which have fallen apart over the years. And it’s no closer to being decrypted now than it was a century ago, when it first resurfaced.” She stopped. “Did I leave anything out?”

“Wow. That’s the most succinct description I’ve ever heard. I usually take a lot longer to describe it,” Steven said.

“That’s probably because you get caught up in the minutiae, like ‘word entropy’, which isn’t relevant to a general overview,” Natalie countered.

“Touché. Did you happen to pick up any of your father’s thinking as to who the author was, or what language was used as its basis?” Steven asked, genuinely curious.

Natalie’s demeanor became guarded. “He didn’t like to speculate. Over the years, he considered and then rejected several possibilities, but in the end I’m not sure he really had a favorite. I do know that he believed it wasn’t a fraud, as some earlier ‘scholars’ of it posited,” she concluded.

Steven was impressed with her grasp of the document’s intricacies. There were few people in the world he could discuss the Voynich with who had any idea what he was talking about ten seconds into the conversation.

“What about speculation that the whole thing was concocted by Edward Kelley?” Steven countered.

“To fool John Dee, or Emperor Rudolf? Not a chance. The text doesn’t in any way resemble a random character set or an invented language. The likelihood is close to zero. No, it may be a mystery, but it isn’t a hoax,” Natalie pronounced with certainty.

Steven considered her comment.

“I happen to agree, by the way. As do the majority of the cryptology community,” Steven said.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, watching Florence’s outskirts glide by and the countryside south of it appear outside their darkened windows.

“Aren’t you concerned that whoever is tracking you might have discovered the villa you’re staying at?” Steven asked, changing the subject.

“Not a chance. I got it from a last minute rental pool on the internet and paid for it with a wire from an untraceable bank account in Austria. It’s as clean as anything in the world gets,” Natalie assured him.

“What about your flight from the States? That has to show up somewhere.”

He knew a few things about the precautions one had to take in order to stay below the radar, and they were not only difficult to master, but most amateurs blew it by hoping that the data was so massive it could never be sifted to reveal their moves. Hope was a lousy strategy, he’d learned.

“Not if you have several passports and identities,” she explained, as if addressing a schoolboy.

Steven had no pithy rejoinder. She was right. He just never imagined she might have multiple IDs. He made a mental note not to underestimate her — between her grasp of the Voynich, and her obvious fluency with the nuances of anonymous international travel and payment methods, she’d just demonstrated she knew more about those arcane topics than all but a tiny fraction of the population.

He stole a glance at her, sitting next to him, absently looking through the car window as they got onto the highway leading south. All that, and wrapped in an edgy, knockout, suede-clad package.

Steven had the sensation that he was already in whatever this was to a point way over his head. But the contents of Natalie’s satchel, as well as the woman herself, ensured he’d have to keep pushing forward to see where the road led. At least for a while longer.