And what did that mean? Maddening, she was maddening, and he knew she was hiding something, but what? Her spicy scent wafted to his nose as she bent and carefully, gently, turned a page. “These are from the astrological section, and as you can see, they are crowned with constellations.”
“These match no constellation I’ve ever seen.”
“I believe it’s Taurus.” She laid down the page on the desk, picked up another. “The long-lost page seventy-four. Someone cut it out, folded it into thirds, put it inside the quire, and stuck it in an original Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. Yes, the handwritten version.” Her lies came so easily now, after so much repetition. “A collector named Sweig had it. His collection was donated to us two months ago, and I found all of this while I was cataloging the collection. It was an incredible moment. I mean, you can still see the bast fiber threads on the linen support. That alone shouted at me. But when I saw the Voynichese, I knew what I had.”
Page 74. He couldn’t believe, yet he was standing there, actually looking at it. Words were difficult. “It—it’s incredible.”
“I know, right? We have the provenance of the Aurelius manuscript intact and verified. It originally came from the library of an Italian estate outside of Venice, Gradara Castle.” A bit of truth: she’d placed the pages there, a tribute, really, to Gradara, to whomever had drawn the picture of the castle. How many centuries ago?
“Gradara? Many a Voynich scholar have speculated the castle on page eighty-six might be Gradara. You know, the one with—”
She grinned. “Right, the one with the curved merlons. Yes. No one has ever known for certain which castle the drawing represented, but I’m certain it’s Gradara. It must have been added to the manuscript at least a century, maybe more, after the Voynich was originally penned. I like to picture a young prince looking through the manuscript, drawing the view outside his window. And I wonder if he was punished.” She laughed. “I know, I have a strange imagination.”
“More likely an imprisoned monk drew what he could see from his cell.”
“I like my imagining better—yours is much too dark.”
You have no idea how dark, or how true, my dear.
“Well, Dr. Marin, since you have all the insights, do you know who wrote the blasted thing?”
She leaned back against the desk, arms crossed over her chest. “No. Your guess is as good as mine. The castle drawing, though, has always looked like a doodle to me. Like someone was drawing a view, not putting it in the manuscript on purpose. Or maybe we’re all wrong, and it’s the signature of the writer.” She shrugged. “Another mystery surrounding the manuscript.”
Roman stared at page 74. He had only a moment before she turned it over and gathered the loose pages very carefully together and slid them into a soft folder. He couldn’t wait to tell Radu, couldn’t wait to have the pages in his keeping.
“Make me a copy of these pages. I need to study them.”
Something in Dr. Bruce’s voice made gooseflesh rise on Isabella’s arms. His voice was too harsh, too intense, and he was standing too close, staring at her as if he was going to—what? She didn’t know, but she suddenly felt a bolt of fear and knew she didn’t want to be alone with him for another minute. Even if he was an expert and a friend of Persy’s, only an odd man, she still wanted to get away from him. Time to get him out of here. She straightened and closed the folder, took a step back.
Roman cursed to himself. He’d alarmed her, been too preemptory, sounded peculiar, obsessive. But he knew these pages were exactly what he needed—he knew it to his soul. He wanted desperately to touch them, to remove the protective casing and feel the gall ink under his fingers. There was blood in the ink, he was sure of it, mixed in with the berries. The blood of his ancestors, and their blood was calling, calling to him over endless expanse of time. He could almost hear their voices.
Roman could see her edging away, her beautiful face now set and pale. Had he said it aloud? His breath was coming faster. Her scent, her blood, the pages—get a hold of yourself!
He straightened, tried to look benign and a bit befuddled. “Forgive me, Dr. Marin. I’m overexcited by this incredible find. I would greatly like to study these pages. Perhaps I could lend my expertise, and together we could—”
Isabella shook her head. “I’m sorry, Dr. Bruce, but we’re not ready to free them into the wild just yet. No one is allowed to remove even the most simple facsimile of these papers from the museum. Not even me.”
“When will you go on your twin search?”
“I begin in earnest tomorrow.” Why had he asked? Again, she felt that tingling fear. Could he have stolen the manuscript? Could her plan have worked so quickly? No, surely not. He was simply an overeager scholar. Still, she hugged the folder to her chest. “Dr. Wynn-Jones asked me to show you the pages, Dr. Bruce, as a courtesy, but now I’m afraid I have to get back to work. Thank you for your interest. Good day.”
Roman pulled on his Dr. Laurence Bruce self again, all deprecating smiles, as unthreatening as a puppy. “It was wonderful for you to take the time, Dr. Marin, thank you. I’ll be keeping close tabs on you so I can share in your achievement when you publish. Congratulations.”
And he left the room.
Isabella stood frozen a moment, then calmed herself. She’d overreacted. She was walking a dangerous line and was going to see thieves and crooks in every face until the true criminal came for her. Still, she put the folder with the facsimile of the quires back into Persy’s safe, then grabbed her things. She wanted to leave, to clear her head.
“Phyllis, I’m going to head home early. I’ve overdone it today, I think, and I have a headache. Tell Persy I’ll see him bright and early tomorrow morning, will you?”
Phyllis wasn’t stupid. She saw something was wrong. Had Dr. Bruce said something? No, no, not possible. Dr. Bruce was a sweetheart, the prototypical absentminded scholar. She patted Isabella’s hand. “It’s been indeed a wild day for you. You deserve a nice dinner, maybe some champagne, too. Celebrate, Dr. Marin. You’re going to be even busier from here on out.”
“I hope so, Phyllis. See you later”—and she was out the door and racing up the stairs to her own office one floor above. She closed and locked her office door, opened her safe, much smaller and less grand than her boss’s, and from it, she lifted out the real pages wrapped in soft linen and put them carefully into her backpack. She hadn’t lied to Dr. Bruce. No one was supposed to take the quire from the museum. And as far as anyone knew, the originals were in Dr. Wynn-Jones’s safe. She couldn’t be separated from the pages.
She realized she did now have a headache. Too much stress and, yes, fear, all catching up with her. Still, she felt the remembered excitement of her very first press conference, remembered every fluent lie she’d told. It was probably online for all the world to see, and she was at center stage. And wasn’t that something? She thought of her mother, her small, delicate mother, who’d died only last year, the cancer taking her so very quickly. In her will, she’d requested Isabella to sell or donate everything she’d owned.
Except for the pages. And that’s where the precious quire and page 74 had really been hidden, not in the ridiculous British Museum but buried in her mother’s garden. She knew her mother hadn’t wanted her near the pages, but still, she’d obviously felt compelled to tell her daughter where she’d buried them. Why? So she could make up her own mind what to do with them.
Of course, after she’d dug up the pages, she understood everything. She was too late to steal the Voynich herself and reunite the pages—it had been stolen only one month before her mother had died. But she knew, deep where knowledge resided, that whoever had stolen the Voynich from the Beinecke would come for the rest of the pages. Eagerly. And so she’d set her plan into motion.
And when the thief came for the pages, as she knew he would, she would kill him. The pages were sacred, the Voynich was sacred. She would reunite the pages as she was meant to.
Now it was done. Surely the thief kn
ew about the pages after the grand announcement today. All knew who she was.
But none knew she’d managed to buy a gun, no easy manner in England. She would be ready when he came.
She looked around carefully as she pedaled her bike out of the garage, but she didn’t see the man in glasses watching her from the shadows.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Drummond House
Barton Street, Westminster
London
It was late. Nicholas and Mike sat alone in the living room, pleasantly buzzed on excellent cabernet and the warmth of the fire.
Nicholas rose to stir the fire, making sparks fly upward. He said over his shoulder, “I refused to put a gas fireplace in. I love the smell of woodsmoke.”
Mike yawned, stretched. She’d kicked off her high heels and tucked her legs under her. “It’s easier to burn documents in a real fire, too. By the way, I saw a DHL office down the street—how late is it open?”
He glanced at the massive grandfather clock in the corner, there since the middle of the eighteenth century. “Another hour, why?”
“Let’s overnight letters to Zachery and Savich, warn them we don’t know how deep the infiltration has gone. They can decide whether they feel they can keep the president safe when he arrives here. It’s Tuesday night and he’s scheduled to arrive Sunday. Not much time for us to nail the bad guys.”
He arched a dark brow. “When do we ever have the luxury of time? Happily, we know more about this suspect than he, or she, realizes. First, whoever is behind this is independently wealthy. To build your own drones to this level of capability takes huge financial backing. Like my father said, the one you shot down cost millions. And the tiny ones aren’t much cheaper, especially retrofit to carry a poison payload like it was.”
“So where do we get a list of filthy-rich billionaires currently living in England?”
“My father,” Nicholas said, and he wasn’t smiling.
Mike shook her head, pushed her glasses back up her nose. “Let’s get those letters to Zachery and Savich written.” She rose, smoothed down her dress, slipped her shoes back on. “I doubt they’ll cancel the trip, but who knows? The CIA and FBI will sure be scrambling to see if they’ve been infiltrated.”
They drafted the letters, laying out the situation, giving them suggested protocols for communication.
Mike said, “We’re so used to instant communication. It feels strange to be out of touch until this is finished.”
Nicholas yawned, checked his watch. “We’ve got to hurry. A quick walk to post these letters at DHL, then perhaps we can find a way to pass the time until morning.”
Mike was surprised when she stepped outside and felt the crisp, cool air and shivered. “It’s the bloody middle of July, for heaven’s sake.”
He didn’t answer, and she turned to see him staring up at the sky. Her heart ticked up a notch as she looked upward, and her hand automatically went for her Glock. But of course it wasn’t there. Penderley’s men had confiscated Nicholas’s Glock she’d used to shoot down the drone. Her own Glock 27 was in her purse, upstairs. “What? What is it?”
He pointed. “It’s a falcon, in the birch tree across the street. Move slowly, don’t startle it.”
Mike didn’t move. She couldn’t see the bird, but she did see a red dot emanating from the branches.
“I don’t see the falcon. What’s that red light?”
The falcon flew into the air, hovered overhead a moment, then shot away into the darkness.
Nicholas said in a whisper, “The red light, it was a camera. That bleeding bird was spying on us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
To see a hawk in flight is to be privileged to watch a master of the air. . . . It is a unique hunting partnership—you tame her, tend her, train her, and work her to the peak of physical condition, then release her to the elements whilst you become no more than a mere spectator.
—Emma Ford, Falconry: Art and Practice
Arlington resumed her journey, wings stretched, soaring over the city. She hadn’t been allowed to fly free like this for some time and was tempted to simply keep flying and never go back, but she loved her master and so followed his instructions to the letter.
She flew south, the Thames a smoky ribbon below her, over bridges, adjusting here and there for the GPS coordinates programmed into her special collar. The pulses gave her a path to follow, small pings that focused her flight. If she deviated more than ten yards off course, it gave a tiny shock, nothing so great as to drop her from the sky, only a reminder to adjust back to the proper heading.
She’d trained with the rest of the cabal for months and was the best of them all at following the signals. When she returned, she knew she would be given the choicest morsels to eat and the best cadge.
The camera on her head was an annoyance, nothing more. She was accustomed to wearing a hood; it was part of her daily uniform. The small sliver of leather fit perfectly, designed and cut specifically for her. Each falcon and eagle in the mews had its own hood and special leggings made of Kevlar to cover talons and legs. It was a part of their job to learn how to soar over the rooftops with the tiny cameras recording all they saw.
Although Arlington was trained to hunt drones, to take them from the sky, tonight her mission was one of surveillance only.
The collar pinged, and she pulled up, soaring to her right, toward the final coordinates. She saw pigeons in a nearby tree scatter when they saw her, but she ignored them, flying to the third floor, descending to land gracefully on the brick windowsill. She tensed. She wanted to follow the pigeons, bring them down, talons flexed, tear into them.
A small pulse at her neck.
She looked away from the scattered flock back through the window, to her target. The camera transmitting back to her other master—the quiet one—whirred gently. She trusted him, but she didn’t feel the same affection for him. Still, she would do as she was told. It was what she’d been trained to do.
For ten minutes, Arlington perched calmly, beak forward. A pulse, her head to the left. Another pulse, her head to the right. The camera whirred.
* * *
Back at the Old Garden, Radu looked into the flat. He watched the woman undress, though it didn’t excite him. She showered, made a cup of tea, then sat down at her computer. The computer, now that made him feel something. It was twenty-eight inches diagonally, a perfect size for viewing from across the room. He zoomed the camera onto the screen and started capturing the shots, one after another, as she flicked through the pages.
The quality of the camera on Arlington’s head was professional-grade, which meant he could see every detail, every scratch in the ink, every crease in the paper. The room was well decorated, the computer screen top-notch. He wondered idly how a young woman fresh out of college interning at a museum could afford such a computer, then forgot it, it didn’t matter. They were lucky she had made the investment, because it was making his job easier. Radu loved the spying. Roman was the one who enjoyed the hands-on work.
The woman flipped through the pages, her chin resting on her palm, oblivious to the falcon outside her window watching everything she did. It was a pity, he thought again, that Drummond had not been so oblivious. Radu had a premonition about this Brit, and it scared him. But he knew Roman wouldn’t listen to him if he tried to warn him away, and so he would keep it to himself. Yes, their drone had missed Drummond this morning. Radu would not miss again.
Ten minutes of watching, reveling in reading the words that could cure him of the uncontrolled hemophilia. He’d been told his disease was unique, that unlike most hemophiliacs, a small cut could drain his blood and he’d be dead. Modern medications had no effect. It terrified him. Ah, but these pages—Radu felt they had all they needed. He sent a pulse, and Arlington flew away. His brother said from behind him in their own private language, “Wait, stop her. Look at the desk.”
Radu hadn’t realized Roman was in the room, he’d been lost in the words in
the lost pages, seeing them, reading and understanding them.
Radu sent another pulse to Arlington, and she flew back and crouched again on the sill. Again, her head moved to the right, then to the left, the camera whirred.
Radu said, “The camera is hitting its limit. We will lose everything if I don’t shut it down soon.”
Roman sounded amazed, disbelieving. “Soon, but not yet. Imagine, Radu, that woman has the pages, the actual physical pages. There, in her flat. It is all so prosaic, so common.”
Radu said, “Those aren’t the real pages, surely they’re facsimiles.”
“No, I don’t think so. I believe she made copies, and those are the ones locked in a safe at the museum. Radu, look at the corner of her desk. More pages. I don’t believe they’re part of the quire she announced finding today.”
Radu looked closely. His eyes weren’t as good as his brother’s, and even with the exceptionally high-resolution camera, the angle was too much for him. “But why wouldn’t she release them with the others?”
“I don’t know, but I do believe she has them all. Radu, trust me. I have a feeling about this.”
“Then we need to see those pages.”
“Yes. She is Romanian, you know. I could smell it on her even before she told me, gypsy blood calling to mine. Never has that happened before, even when I sought other blood for you. No, this was unique. And I don’t believe she found the pages in some old book at the museum. I think she had them already, brought them into the museum, planted them there so she could ‘discover’ them at the proper time.”
“But how did she get the originals?”
“Are you not listening? She’s Romanian. I knew when she announced she’d found the pages in that Marcus Aurelius, it wasn’t possible, that she’d made it up. Like you, though, I don’t know how she came to have the pages and why she picked now to announce it. She made a huge point of asking the person who stole the Voynich from the Beinecke to return it so the pages could be reunited. Yes, she said those exact words. Reunited. She knows something, Radu. And then there is her blood—”