After a moment, Temora gave a tiny nod. Nicholas looked up at the camera in a silent demand. A minute later, there was a knock at the door, and a bottle of water was handed in. Nicholas cracked the top and gave the bottle to Temora, who drank it down in a few gulps.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Care to tell me why the bloody hell you’re here, Drummond?”
“I’d like to talk about an old friend of yours. Roman Ardelean.”
Nicholas could have sworn Temora sneered.
“I figured.”
“I need to know how to stop him, Caleb. He’s killed four important people here in England, not to mention a couple of dozen innocent people across Europe. He’s planning something. An attack of some kind. We need to know what it is.”
“I haven’t talked to that egomaniac in years. I have nothing for you.”
&nb
sp; “You know him better than we do. You worked for him, earned his trust—he respected you. Barstow forced you to hack into his company’s computer systems. You’re our best chance at stopping him right now, before he burns down the city. You help us, and I’ll get you out of here.”
“Talk to his freak of a brother. He knows him better than I do.”
“His brother is dead.”
Temora’s eyes narrowed. “You say Radu Ardelean is dead?”
“Yes.”
“Did you kill him?”
“In a way, I suppose. I was part of a raid on Ardelean’s house to save a woman he’d kidnapped, a twin like himself, who could read and speak Voynichese. Unfortunately, there were complications. He bled to death.”
“Well, it’s a bloody miracle he made it this long. It’s taken serious cash to keep that man alive. His hemophilia was off-the-charts bizarre, nothing in modern medicine touched it. Imagine not being able to close off a vein, unheard of. I thought it really wasn’t hemophilia at all. Something else—”
“How about something in not-so-modern medicine?”
“You mean Roman’s ridiculous idea that the Voynich held the key to curing all of Radu’s ailments? Yes, I know all about their attempts to find the missing quires.
“If Roman and Radu could truly read the Voynich, then they must be the only two on the face of the world. I couldn’t read it, and I can read any code.”
“It’s not a code, it’s a language. Only certain twins can read it.”
“Yeah, yeah, so you said. Do you know I even saw the original manuscript? Barstow had it stolen from Yale. Ah, I see you didn’t know that. Here’s another freebie. The original Voynich is at his house, in his safe. He bragged about it.”
“Thank you. Whatever else the Ardeleans believed, they trusted the instructions in the manuscript to cure Radu, that and the right blood.”
“I don’t suppose you know they also used it as the basis for their encryption, believing they were only ones who knew the language and so no one could ever crack their systems?”
“I do, actually. Tell me, you can’t read the Voynich, yet you cracked their systems?”
“I had a leg up. Being on the inside of the company was a help for Barstow’s mission, wasn’t it? They may have been crazy, but Radu and Roman knew how to design bulletproof code.”
“How’d you get in, then? If it’s bulletproof?”
“Drummond, you of all people know all code is designed with a back door. I simply opened the one I’d left behind and walked in. Made their lives a living hell for a bit.”
“Does Ardelean know you went into ISIS as an operative?”