The Sixth Day (A Brit in the FBI 5)

She laughed and grabbed his hand. “Into the breach.” Ben followed her up, then down a long, blue-walled hallway. Three doors down, Melinda stopped and knocked.

The door opened. It was Dr. Wynn-Jones, the chair of the antiquities department himself, who’d introduced Dr. Marin at the press conference. And behind him stood Dr. Isabella Marin.

“My dear Melinda, come in, come in. And who is this very intelligent-looking chap, who, interestingly, was holding your hand?”

Melinda received a bear hug, then stood back, and introduced them. “This is my good friend, FBI Special Agent Houston, from the New York FBI. No, no, despite your reputation he’s not here to arrest you.”

The two men shook hands. Dr. Wynn-Jones said, “And this is Dr. Isabella Marin. She’s my wunderkind. Isabella, this is Melinda St. Germaine and Agent Houston. I’ve known her family for years, smart as whips, all of them. I was crushed when she decided to go into politics, since she has one of the best eyes for art this side of the Thames. It’s been too long, my dear girl.”

Best eyes for art? So you planned this whole thing for me, did you? And then you asked me to give you a history of the Voynich? She probably knows all the names I’ve long forgotten.

Melinda said, “Sir, Agent Houston is a fan of the Voynich. He worked the case last year when it was stolen from Yale. I wondered, do you think it would be possible—?”

Dr. Wynn-Jones beamed at her. “Ah! You want to see the pages? Of course, of course. Isabella, shall we all go down together and take a look?”

Ben was staggered. He shook Dr. Wynn-Jones’s hand. “That would be wonderful, sir, thank you.”

“Call me Persy, although Melinda here refuses to. From the looks of you two, I’d say you’re very good friends indeed.” He looked from one to the other and chortled.

* * *

Two hours later, Ben felt shell-shocked. The missing pages were so very old he’d been afraid to touch them. He kept shaking his head, staring at them. When he and Melinda were back on the street, waiting for a taxi, Ben looked at his watch. “I’m glad Nicholas waited to text me until we were leaving Dr. Wynn-Jones and Dr. Marin. He and Mike are coming to London, asked me to come by. How far is it to Westminster from here?”

“Twenty, thirty minutes, depending on traffic. I wish we had my car. We’d get to Westminster faster than in a taxi.”

Ben knew that was fact. She drove her black Range Rover like a bat out of hell, which made his heart occasionally freeze, but he liked it. He’d asked, and no, she’d never had an accident.

As they waited for the taxi, Ben chanced to look up. He saw a small drone flying overhead, then it veered off, toward the east. “Did you see that, Melinda?”

“See what? There’s our taxi.” She threw out her arm and caught him just as he started to step off the curb. “Whoops, you look left, right, left, here, not right, left, right. You’re in London, remember? I don’t want you to get run over by a bus.”

“Thank you. There was a drone overhead. It took off to the east. I wonder what that’s about.”

“A drone? Now that’s odd. I thought the only folk allowed to fly drones in the city are Scotland Yard. Maybe they were testing a new one.”

It took them fifty-seven minutes to get to Westminster.

“Next time,” Melinda said, “It’s the Ranger Rover for us, Agent Houston.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

For almost 100 years, experts and amateur researchers have tried to solve the riddle of a handwritten book, referred to as the “Voynich manuscript,” composed in an unknown script. T

he numerous theories about this remarkable document are contradictory and range from plausible to adventurous.

—Klaus Schmeh, Skeptical Inquirer Volume 35.1

Roman punched off his mobile, stared blankly down at his hands. The lost quire found, by a nobody, at the British Museum? How could this be? How could it be possible?

And she knew it was twin talk? She was going on a hunt for the twins who could read the Voynich?

He remembered the gut fear he’d felt when the Voynich had been stolen last year from Beinecke at Yale. Even though the manuscript had been digitized and released into the world, someone had wanted the original badly enough to break into the Beinecke and steal it. And that meant someone believed there was something in the original pages no one had seen? No, that was ridiculous. Then why was it stolen? Why hadn’t it appeared on the black market? He was always listening, but he’d never heard even a whisper something could be hidden in the original Voynich pages. If he had, he’d have stolen the bloody manuscript himself. She’d said the pages had to be reunited? He felt a frisson of alarm, of uncertainty.

First things first. Roman sat down at his desk, a massive slab of driftwood, and pressed a button. An LED-crystal computer screen slid upward out of a hidden, built-in frame. He pulled the keyboard and mouse from his center drawer and went to the British Museum’s website. He saw they’d wasted no time. He pressed the link and watched the press conference twice, the second time pausing every few minutes. She was a Voynich expert, she admitted she couldn’t read it all, but she believed it was written in twin talk.

How could she have possibly figured her way to that? And only certain, unique twins could read it? And she was going to find the twins who could? Isabella Marin was lying, not everything she said, but enough. Why?

“I have found the key.” It was this missing page 74? It was written so a reader could figure it out? That was nonsense; she was absolutely lying. She finished with her plea to return the stolen manuscript so the pages would be reunited.