Steven decided to check his e-mail before he started with the Scroll, which would take an unknown length of time. He got online and opened his web mail, to find over two hundred messages. He looked at the most recent, and sorted by sender. There was a new missive from Gwen that morning.
[Police stopped by again, wanted your cell, gave it to them. Said some sort of problem in Rome? Also, cryptic message from man named Luca. Says urgent you call him about Vornik.]
The mention of the Voynich jarred him. He reread it and then jotted the number down. Steven quickly went through the rest of his mail, forwarding the lion’s share to Gwen for attention. It was all business related except for that one.
What the hell was the message all about? A trap? That was the likeliest explanation. But did they really think he was stupid enough to fall for it?
Then again, what was the trap? All he was being asked to do was make a call. Which he could do from anywhere. Even over the internet, if he used one of the myriad online services.
Natalie terminated her call in the kitchen and called out to him.
“Breakfast is ready. Kind of. Hope you like your toast really well done, along with your eggs.”
“How did you know? I’m an open book to you, aren’t I?”
He approached the round wooden dining room table and sat down, marveling again at how good Natalie looked in her gym shorts and T-shirt as she brought him a plate and coffee. She returned to the kitchen, then came back with her own breakfast and sat across from him.
“What did Moody have to say?”
“The search is heating up in Rome and could go national within twenty-four hours. They have our photos from passport control and immigration. And they found Danny’s body — he’d been tortured,” Natalie said and took a bite of her toast. “Shit. It’s burnt.”
“Tortured? What does Moody suggest we do?”
“Stay put until he can get to Venice this afternoon. He’s taking a commuter flight within a few hours, and he’ll call once he’s here. But he says this is getting uglier by the minute. Now it’s your turn. What did the computer come up with on the translation?” Natalie asked.
“Well, it’s going to take a while to sort out. But I got an interesting e-mail…” Steven described the message to her.
Her eyes widened and she dropped her fork.
“It’s probably Frank. Some sort of a trick. I wouldn’t call. Certainly not until Moody’s in the loop,” she said.
“I’m not so sure about that. Where’s the trick? If I use a calling card or the web so they can’t trace me, what’s the trap?” he asked.
Natalie racked her brain, but ultimately had to agree that there was no gotcha immediately evident.
“We should get a calling card and make the call from a pay phone. Maybe something by Saint Mark’s Square, in Venice. There are tens of thousands of tourists going through it every day, so best of luck trying to run a trace — if they even could after you put the call through the calling card. And that will give me another opportunity to see Venice…and have a nice lunch there, maybe?” she reasoned. “Now, how long do you think it will take to go through the results on the Scroll?”
“Let me see what we have.” He moved to the coffee table with his plate and cup, setting them down next to the laptop before he scrolled through the results. “Give me a couple of hours to translate these and study the possible combinations. Some look like gibberish to me at first glance, but you never know.”
“I’ll leave you to it and not distract you any further,” Natalie said.
“You can distract me any time you want,” Steven said, meaning every word.
“Yeah, but we’re not getting a lot done, are we?”
“Depends on what you mean by ‘getting,’ or ‘a lot,’ or ‘done’.”
“All right, Doctor. I’ll go freshen up while you do your important work,” Natalie said, finished with her breakfast. She stood and took her plate into the kitchen, refilling her coffee before moving to the bedroom.
“I can put on a white exam coat and you can call me Doctor later,” Steven suggested.
“I’d prefer just the little mirrored head thing and nothing else. Except your boots. Is that a problem?”
“There are no problems. Only solutions.”
“That’s my boy. Now go solve the most important riddle in the world, would you? By lunchtime, preferably. Stop lagging.”
Steven returned to the screen, and cut and pasted the two hundred or so possible sentences into his translation engine, starting with Latin. The computer fan whirred as if it were trying for liftoff, and after a few minutes a new page appeared with all the English variations. He studied row after row of seeming nonsense, pausing occasionally to select the most likely suspect for each section. It was a tedious and painstaking process, but there was no substitute for human selection. One of the ever-present problems was semantics — something that might have been subject to interpretation in Latin could translate as nonsense in English, so once the possible words were segmented in that language, he’d have to go back and do his best to verify he hadn’t missed anything.
Time flew by, and before he knew it two hours had passed. Steven rubbed his blurry red eyes and stared at the paragraph he’d assembled. He was used to his thirty-two inch monitor; the laptop screen wasn’t nearly as easy to read on. Some of the terms looked like place names, so he began entering them into search engines.
Natalie emerged from the bedroom at noon to see how he was faring. He greeted her with a triumphant grin. She locked eyes with him, and he nodded.
“You didn’t,” she said.
“Sure did. Although it doesn’t look like anything about this damn Scroll is going to be easy. But I think it’s safe to say it’s given up its secret.” He hesitated, then toasted her with his now-cold coffee. “I’ve decrypted the Voynich.”
CHAPTER 30
Gwen was getting ready to go to lunch when her private line rang. There were only a few people in the world with that number, and she didn’t think her mother would be calling in the middle of the day. Besides, Mum usually called the cell. She inspected the caller ID, but didn’t recognize the number. Roman prefix. She put her purse back down on the desk and, after looking around the room, lifted the handset to her ear.
“Hullo?”
“Gwen. It’s me. Don’t say my name, okay?” Steven said.
“A…all right. What a lovely surprise to hear your voice. You’ve been in high demand lately,” Gwen responded.
“You don’t know the half of it. Listen. You sent me a message. A gentleman caller anxious for me to connect. What can you tell me about him, other than his name? What did he want?” Steven asked.
“All he said was that he needed to speak to you about the Vladnik, and how you’d know what it meant. Said it would be in your best interest to contact him as soon as possible.”
Steven let the mispronunciation go. “I don’t suppose you ran the number through the reverse directory, did you?”
“Funny you should ask. I know how your mind works by now. Yes, I did, and it came up as one of a group of lines assigned to the Vatican. Are you thinking of converting? Becoming a man of the cloth? Careful with that one, luv, it might be a midlife crisis as opposed to a true calling…”
“You’re sure it was the Vatican?” Steven asked.
“Hard to get that wrong, don’t you think?”
“Hmm. And what else has been going on during my holiday?”
Gwen cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and turned away from the circle of computers, where Sophie and Ben were busy coding away. “The Roman police sent a couple of coppers round. Seems they want to talk to you big time. I told them truthfully that I had no idea where you were. They wanted to know if I had a contact number, so I gave them your cell. I’m sorry. I hope that wasn’t a wrong move.”