The Voynich Cypher

CHAPTER 12

“You’re saying that this little emblem, or whatever it is, is similar to some parchment you worked on?” Natalie summarized, surprised at the direction events had suddenly moved in.

“No, I’m saying that it is the exact same crest as on a medieval parchment that I own — I bought it along with four others from an antique book dealer several years ago. One of the oldest families in the business in Italy, and perhaps all of Europe. They’ve been at it for hundreds of years, and many of the older pieces in circulation have moved through their hands at one time or another if a sale was involved. This parchment was part of the family’s private collection, which comprised mainly obscure and historically insignificant documents. The only reason it’s now noteworthy is because of the drawing. Otherwise it would just be a run-of-the-mill fifteenth century coded letter that was drafted using a fairly complex substitution cypher. The pisser is that I actually consigned it to a rare book company six months ago, with some of my others,” Steven explained, then shifted his attention to the Scroll. “If you look at the crest, you’ll see that it’s an eleven-circuit labyrinth. Not sure if that has any significance…”

“What does that mean?”

“See the path? If you count the rings, you’ll see that there are eleven levels. Older labyrinths tend to be simpler. This is similar to the one in Chartres Cathedral in France,” Steven explained.

“So it’s a maze…some sort of a puzzle?”

“No. Labyrinths have well defined paths. Mazes don’t — they’re intended to challenge the intellect with numerous dead-ends. With labyrinths, the symbolism is deeper. The only decision with a labyrinth is whether or not to enter it. Everything else is about the trip through. In a way, this could be a veiled reference to beginning a tortuous journey…”

“Do you remember what the parchment said?” Natalie asked.

“Not really. It…it simply wasn’t anything particularly noteworthy. At least not then. I just put it onto the curiosities pile and went about my business. At the time, I had a lot going on…I’d just lost my wife in a car crash, so I wasn’t really that involved in much of anything for a while…”

“I’m sorry, Steven.” Natalie said quietly.

“It was two and a half years ago… Anyway, the point is, I’ve seen the parchment and I’ll need to get hold of it as soon as possible, because it may hold the key to deciphering the Scroll, or at least could put us on the right path.” Steven looked at his watch. “Shit. I’ll need to make a call. If he’s in town, I should be able to get the dealer to scan the document and send it to my e-mail. Let me give it a try.”

Steven consulted his phone’s address book, and after a few moments, conducted a hurried call in Italian. When he hung up, he was smiling.

“Mission accomplished. Framboso, the dealer, hasn’t sold it yet. He promised to get a high resolution scan to me by the end of the day,” Steven said.

“You’re sure it’s the same crest?” Natalie asked.

“Positive. But I have another problem, and I think we need to deal with it sooner than later. My passport and cash are in one of several large safety deposit boxes at a bank in downtown Florence, where I keep my parchment collection. It’s completely secure and climate-controlled.” He stared at the crest closely, nodded, then turned to Natalie. “The bank’s open until five o’clock. I’ll need it anywhere I go in Italy, or if I have to cross a border. Come to think of it, it might not be a terrible idea to put the Scroll in one of the boxes at the same time. If you’ve got scans, there doesn’t seem to be anything on the originals that wouldn’t be on an image. Your call, but you’re welcome to use one of my boxes to store it,” Steven offered.

Natalie hesitated. Steven could tell she was torn. His invitation made sense, but she wasn’t completely willing to give up possession of the Scroll. Too high a price had already been paid for it.

Steven let the moment pass. When push came to shove, it wasn’t his problem — the Scroll wasn’t his property. Then again, it wasn’t really hers, either. She hadn’t paid millions for it.

“I’ll bring it with me and make a decision once I see the security. Not all banks are created equal,” she observed, dodging the moment of truth.

“If we’re going to make it with any time to spare, we better hit the road. Oh, and I think it would be a good idea to stop by my flat so I can get a shaving kit and clothes. Especially if I’m going to be on vacation for a while,” Steven said.

“That’s a terrible idea, Steven. They might be watching your place.”

“Natalie. You said they’d be following up on me as a routine lead, which would be one of many, I’d think. So the likelihood of someone being there, watching the flat with twenty-four hour surveillance, is slim. In fact, the longer I wait, the higher the probability they’ll get interested in it,” he insisted.

“If you’re hell bent on it I can’t stop you, but remember I told you I don’t like it. From my perspective it’s an unnecessary risk. Can’t you have someone else go over and pack a bag for you, and then they meet Frederick someplace crowded? They won’t be looking for an older man. That’s just one of many ways to solve the problem,” Natalie proposed.

“I’ll make the decision later,” Steven said, echoing her earlier comment on the Scroll.

Natalie decided not to press the point. She carefully gathered up the pages and returned them to the canister. Glancing around the table to ensure she wasn’t overlooking anything, she nodded to Steven.

“All right. We’re ready. Tell Frederick where the bank is, and with any luck, we should make it before five,” she said.

Traffic was the usual late-afternoon snarl, with the angry insect-like buzzing of motor-scooter engines flooding the streets. Honking on some of the larger roads was a near constant as two-wheeled scooter-nauts with a death wish darted from alleys and wove their way through the procession of cars. Sirens screamed in the distance, announcing that one of the daredevils had mistimed a move and would be heading to the hospital or the morgue.

They arrived at the bank with fifteen minutes to spare. Steven escorted Natalie into the modern lobby of the restored building and through the computerized security system for the safety deposit boxes. Once they were in the vault, he fished around in his pants for a set of keys and methodically opened one of the larger compartments, taking care as he extracted a three-foot long, foot high metal box and set it on the table in one of the adjoining private rooms.

After they were both seated, Steven opened the lid. Natalie gave an involuntary shiver from the air-conditioning; the breeze outside was fresh, as early summer in Italy could be, but the room was borderline cold. He removed a plastic document container and retrieved his passport and a wad of euros — fifty thousand of which he kept in cash out of force of habit. There had been a time in his life when he carried that much around with him on a routine basis, but that had been over half a decade before, and the two bundles of bills felt strangely heavy to him now. He weighed them both in his hands, then replaced one bundle, putting the other into the zip-up pocket of his lightweight windbreaker along with the passport. Natalie watched him silently.

“The vault is temperature controlled at sixty-seven degrees year round, and the air-conditioning keeps most of the humidity out of the air, so for storing parchments it’s a good situation. Ideally, I would build a storage unit of my own and have more precise control, with a backup generator in case of loss of power, but for as small a collection as I have, that would be silly,” he said.

“How many parchments do you keep here?” Natalie asked.

“Forty-five, at last count. I have four of these drawers,” Steven explained.

They exchanged glances. Steven looked at her quizzically — it was time to make the decision about leaving the Scroll in the bank. A quiet struggle went on behind her eyes as she weighed the risks of allowing the two million dollar document out of her sight, in the safety deposit box of a man she’d just met. Eventually, she nodded at Steven.

“I suppose it would be best if we left it here. But I think it would be appropriate to put me on the security list so I can access the box if something, well, goes wrong or happens to you…” Natalie reasoned.

“Fair enough. We can sit down with the manager on the way out. We should get going.” Steven smiled. “Looks like we’re going to have to trust each other a little.”

“That’s not so easy for me to do.”

Steven decided not to go there. Whatever was playing behind those violet eyes, it could do so without his intrusion. He reached across and placed the Scroll container delicately in the drawer before closing and locking the top, then carried it over to the bank of compartments and replaced it with a slam of the door.

They stopped at the manager’s desk, but he’d gone home early, so they were faced with another hurdle. Natalie sighed and, shaking her head, strolled to the front entrance. What was done was done.

“We can come back tomorrow and put you on the list, Natalie,” Steven offered, following her to the exit.

“Sure. I’m not going to worry about it now. Let’s get going,”

They walked down the block to where Frederick had the car waiting. Natalie turned to him.

“I want to try to talk you out of going to your apartment, Steven. It’s a really bad idea. We can get you whatever you need at any of a hundred stores in town. There’s just no reason to take the risk I can see,” Natalie said.

“Well, I can think of a big one, besides liking my own stuff. The software program for decrypting parchments I came up with is on my PC at home, and if we want to get to the bottom of all this, it will be an essential.”

“Shit. Okay, now I get it. Do you have it anywhere else? At your office?” Natalie asked.

“No, because when I’m at work I’m generally working. Not trying to decrypt medieval manuscripts,” Steven explained.

“Then I see why it’s worth the risk. Guess we don’t have much choice,” Natalie admitted.

“Not really. Trust me when I say I don’t want to take a bullet in the back to get a software program. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

They drove the seven minutes from the bank to his flat, which was one of five in the old three story building. On Natalie’s instruction, Frederick parked a block away. Steven got out of the car, stopping Natalie as she opened her door.

“It’s probably a bad idea for us to be seen together, Natalie. If anyone is watching my place, your presence there would make my involvement in whatever this is undeniable. Let me go in, grab some stuff, and I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?”

Natalie sank back into the seat. “Fine. I’ll stay here.”

Steven began the walk to his flat, which was around the corner and a hundred yards up the block. He ambled along unhurriedly, watchful of any surveillance, but didn’t spot anything. Maybe Natalie was being sensationalistic. Then again, there was the matter of the two men who’d been at his office just a few short hours before.

He approached his building’s entry and didn’t note anything amiss. Steven slid his key into the creaky old lock, which fought his right to enter with customary Italian ennui. Once inside, he moved to the stairs that led to the second floor.

His cell phone jangled, startling him. He peered at the screen as he climbed the stairs. It was Gwen.

“Hello,” Steven said.

“We got a fix on the phone number those two men left for you, mighty bwana,” Gwen chirped glibly. “It’s to the southern precinct of the police. Looks like they were telling the truth.”

He digested the information. “They were cops after all? What did they say they wanted?”

“Just that they needed to speak with you as soon as possible,” Gwen reminded him.

“E-mail me the number and I’ll give them a buzz. And thanks, Gwen,” Steven said.

“Are you still going to be ‘on holiday’ for a week?” she asked cheerfully.

Steven considered the question. The men were real detectives, so Natalie’s entire story was beginning to look pretty shaky.

“That remains to be seen. For now, consider me gone, and I’ll call you if anything changes,” he offered.

“Okay. Be careful,” Gwen said.

“Will do. I remember your advice — don’t strain anything,” Steven said.

He arrived at his second floor landing and made his way down the old, poorly lit hall. The first door on his right opened, and the nosy old superintendent, Mrs. Salarno, fixed him with a disapproving gaze.

“I heard your voice on the stairs. I hope everything’s all right, si? Nothing too valuable is missing?” she said, hands on her hips.

“Mrs. Salarno. How lovely to see you. I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage. What are you talking about?” Steven asked politely, puzzled by her statement.

“I called the police when I heard the commotion in your flat. This morning, right after you left. I thought maybe you were having problems, so I knocked on the door, but then the noise stopped and nobody came to the door, and I thought, ‘that’s not right’. I called the cops right away. They were here for a few hours. I told them where your office was. Didn’t the lazy jerks come by?”

Steven tried to absorb her rapid-fire account. “Police? Here? And what noise?” Steven looked down the hall towards his front door.

“I let them into your flat. I hope you don’t mind. And I stayed with them to make sure they didn’t make off with anything,” Mrs. Salarno assured him.

Steven gently pushed past the woman and made his way to his door, which had a notice affixed to it from the local police along with a business card inserted into the door jamb. He withdrew the card and pocketed it, glanced at the notification, and then unlocked the handle. Nothing could have prepared him for the vision that greeted him.

The flat looked like it had been torn apart by vandals. Papers were strewn everywhere, drawers hung half opened with a few upended on the floor, and a flower vase was broken on the coffee table. Steven sensed a presence behind him and turned to face Mrs. Salarno.

“I stood here and made sure they didn’t touch anything. I figured you’d rather clean up yourself than have the police rummaging through all your things,” she said.

“This was the way they found it?”

“Exactly the way it was. Like I said, I heard a commotion, and I suspected the worst because you’re always so quiet. There are some broken items in the kitchen, too, which is probably what made the noise. Either that or the drawers.” She paused, taking in the shambles. “It’s a shame that even in this area we’re having robberies. When I was a girl, it was safe enough to leave your front door open. Not now.”

Steven ignored her, eyes roaming over the shambles of his living room while madly processing the implications. Maybe Natalie wasn’t so crazy after all?

Or maybe Natalie’s associates had done this?

What did he know about her, anyway? She’d appeared as if out of a dream, with a wild story and outlandish claims, and convinced him in no time to literally run away with her. She’d mischaracterized the two cops as goons intent on doing him harm, perhaps innocently, or possibly as part of some scheme he wasn’t aware of.

He didn’t get the sense that she was deliberately trying to mislead him, but that was hardly dispositive. The bottom line was that Natalie was a question mark, and he’d have to keep his guard up until he understood more — sparkling violet eyes or no.

Steven skirted the worst of the debris and moved to his computer station. The laptop was gone. That was a big problem. Not only because all of his personal files were on it, but also because it housed the decryption software.

Steven surveyed the clutter, shaking his head. What a mess. He supposed he’d best call the cops and file a report listing the stolen items, which would mean doing a full inventory. Maybe later. For now, he needed to grab some clothes and go to his storage locker downstairs.

He threw together a duffle bag with a week’s worth of clothes and a shaving kit and then moved to the front door, where Mrs. Salarno was in residence.

“Mrs. Salarno, thank you so much for sounding the alarm on this. Who knows how much worse it would have been if it wasn’t for you.” Steven complimented, hoping to be rid of her. She seemed unwilling to leave, so he gently guided her by the arm into the hall.

“If you need anything, you knock, eh? It’s a disgrace this can happen in this neighborhood,” she complained.

Steven nodded in agreement and thanked her again, and then, when he heard her door squeak shut, closed his flat and descended the stairs to the ground floor, where he walked to the back of the long vestibule and unlocked a scratched wooden door. Dank, musty air hit him in the face as he swung it open, and he brushed a cobweb out of the way to turn on the light switch. Two low voltage fluorescent bulbs dimly lit the area, which held five locked storage stalls.

He approached the nearest and unlocked the padlock, swinging the hinged piece of dusty plywood and propping it open with a garbage bag of indeterminate junk he’d been storing for years. He rummaged around among the boxes until his hand felt the distinctive edge of a desktop computer, which he grabbed and lifted free of the cartons. When he’d stored it he’d had the presence of mind to tape the keyboard and mouse to it, along with the power cord, so he was good to go. Steven could use the monitor still sitting on his computer station; all that remained was to hope the old CPU would fire up.

He closed the storage stall and returned to his flat, where he dusted off and then set up the PC. While he waited for it to boot, he went to the bedroom and got a blank CD-ROM from a box in the closet. Upon his return, the screen was proudly displaying a set of icons he’d last seen when he’d moved into the flat. He quickly searched through them until he located the file he was looking for and then began downloading the contents. He hadn’t bothered to save the decryption results for the parchment with the crest and silently kicked himself for his sloppiness. Now he’d need to perform the whole analysis over again, which would be a chore, given that it was processing-intensive. The last time, he remembered, it had taken days.

That gave him an idea. Maybe he could use the company computers to run the program overnight. He invested in the very latest technology for the programmers, changing out the systems every year for cutting-edge advents. One of the office computers could crunch the data in a third of the time Natalie’s little laptop could. He picked up the phone on his computer desk and pressed a speed dial number. Gwen’s voice answered.

“Hey. Is Sophie still there?” Steven asked.

“She sure is.”

“Perfect. I need her to clear the decks on one of the new systems and run a decryption table for me. I can e-mail you the program in a compressed folder and send a separate file with a scan of the document. Can you get Sophie to do that for me?”

“I’ll let her know. You ever find out what the coppers wanted to talk to you about?” Gwen asked.

“There’s been a breakin at my place. I imagine they wanted me to identify what was stolen.”

“Breakin? Did they get anything?”

“Far as I can tell, just my laptop. Not much else worth stealing, unless you want to try to stuff a big screen TV or monitor under your arm. But they messed up the flat pretty badly. Looks like a couple of mountain lions were mating in here,” Steven shared.

“Was there anything critical on your system?”

“Not really. It’s all password protected, but anyone with some time and knowledge could get through that. Mostly just BS. Still, it’s annoying,” Steven groused.

“I’ll bet.”

“I’m going to send the program over and the document a little later. I don’t have internet access at my house. The bastards tore the jack out of the wall and stole the modem. God knows why. Anyway, call me when it’s done. Thanks, Gwen.”

The CD door popped open, signaling that it was finished. Steven logged off the computer and, surveying the damage to the flat once more, he decided there wasn’t a lot more he could do other than clean up. He powered down, pocketed the CD, and lifted the duffel over his shoulder. Glancing around a final time, he shook his head in disapproval at the mess. He would need at least a full day to get everything sorted and put back in place. What a pain in the ass.

He tromped down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk, preoccupied with new doubts about Natalie. Steven thought he was a good judge of character, but you never knew. He’d have to be on guard in case she had mischaracterized her involvement and had simply engineered circumstances to get him to decrypt the Scroll. It had been sheer luck he’d remembered a parchment with the labyrinth symbol on it, although there was no telling how many documents like it were in circulation. Could be only that one, or could be dozens.

He rounded the corner and approached the car, still parked in the same place. Steven was startled when the trunk popped open. Soundlessly interpreting the unspoken instruction, he tossed the duffel into the boot and closed it before moving to the rear door, which Natalie had swung ajar for him.

“Took you long enough,” she complained.

“Yeah, well, I had some odds and ends that needed tidying up,” he responded, watching her face closely for any sign of reaction. She looked at him blankly, obviously annoyed by his glib rejoinder. If she knew anything about the breakin, she was an Academy Award-level actress. He detected nothing but impatience to get going.

Steven regarded her exotic face, noting again in the close proximity that she smelled like a small slice of heaven. Whatever that was, it was a winner, he mused. Or maybe it had just been an awfully long time since…

Best not to go down that road.

“We need to get to a computer so I can check my e-mail and send the program to my office so they can hammer on it. Any ideas?” he asked.

“There’s an internet café up two blocks,” Frederick said. “We passed it earlier.”

Natalie gave Frederick a thumbs up. He pulled into traffic, which was now heavy from the evening rush hour.

Across the street, a whippet-thin man with heavy acne scars marring his hard-chiseled face murmured into a cell phone as he lit a cigarette and pretended to consider a pair of chocolate leather women’s riding boots in a shop window. He took in the car and the license plate, as well as the heavily-tinted windows and the way it rode low, and passed the information to his associate.

“I think it’s him. I trailed him from the flat. I wish we had some photos so we could be sure,” the man muttered into the mouthpiece between puffs.

“We’re trying to get access to the motor vehicle database for a license photo, but there’s nothing else I’ve been able to find. The man obviously isn’t much for social media. Pity. Facebook’s made everything easier…”

The man glanced around and then moved to the street as a motorcycle pulled to the curb. He tossed his smoke into the gutter and climbed on, and the driver gunned the engine before slamming it into gear and pulling into the clogged traffic a dozen car lengths from their quarry.