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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?”
