“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.
CHAPTER 11
The villa was a typical higher-end rental owned by a British couple who used it July and August and leased it out during the ten months they weren’t there. Four bedrooms in two stories, it came fully stocked and with maid service every three days. Located near San Casciano, it was ten miles from Florence, but could have been on a different planet, with none of the bustle or crowds of the larger city. As they pulled down the long, manicured drive, Steven was reminded of his and Antonia’s place in Greve, a scant few miles southwest of them. He forced the tide of memories back into the mental cell he’d built for them — it would do no good to go down a road of wistful regret when there were more pressing matters to attend to.
Studying the house and seeing no other vehicles, Natalie spoke to Frederick, after placing her hand on Steven’s to stop him from getting out of the car. Steven noted that her skin was warm, and that her nails were short, with black nail polish.
“Frederick, would you please take a look inside and ensure we haven’t been disturbed? I’d hate to think we could have been tracked, but…”
“Give me a second. I’ll call you if it’s all clear. If I don’t call within two minutes, get out of here,” Frederick said, leaving the car’s engine running.
Natalie exited the back seat and assumed the vacant position behind the steering wheel. Steven realized she was taking the situation much more seriously than he would have. Then again, his father hadn’t just been murdered, and a large part of him didn’t know what to make of Natalie’s story. Much of it sounded like a paranoid adventure cooked up by a bored rich girl; an invention to make the everyday seem more vital and dangerous. Seeing how careful both she and Frederick were being, he decided to reserve judgment before dismissing their concerns as frivolous.