The 39 Clues [Cahills vs. Vespers] 05 - Trust No One (16 page)

Dan was still holding the knife. Now he looked at it more closely. It was a butter knife, like a small paddle.

“You were going to attack me with
this
?” he said, incredulous.

Dr. Siffright reddened. “I just grabbed whatever was handy,” she said. “I didn’t — I wasn’t — I mean, this is
not
my usual line of work.” She shrugged, then lowered her head sheepishly. “To be honest, I was shaking the whole time. But look, we have a lot to talk about. Why don’t we all get changed and meet in the restaurant?”

The hotel’s restaurant was a
churrascaria
, serving Brazilian-style barbecue. Amy, Dan, and Jake scanned the place quickly, then Jake asked for a table in the corner, in an empty part of the room. Amy knew what he was thinking: This way, they would easily be able to see the rest of the room and anyone approaching them. At the table, Dr. Siffright sat between Jake and Atticus, with Amy and Dan opposite.

Amy thought the
churrascaria
was one of the coolest places she’d ever eaten at. First, they all served themselves at the appetizer buffet, which was at least thirty feet long and held everything from salads to sushi. Ordinary things — lettuce, tomatoes, cheese cubes — alternated with exotic offerings like hearts of palm and manioc.

After they were finished with their appetizers, Dr. Siffright picked up a flat disk by her plate. Each of them had one; they were about the size of coasters, with one side red and the other green.

“You put this by your plate with the green side up when you want meat,” she explained. “If you don’t want any more, you flip it over to the red side.”

Five green disks went faceup on the table. Immediately waiters swarmed around, carrying giant skewers filled with grilled meat. The skewers were easily three feet long, and each waiter held a knife the size of a machete.

“Chicken,” said the first waiter. “You like some chicken?”

“I have sirloin steak here.”

“Anybody want lamb chops?”

“Wow,” Jake said, his eyes wide. “I think we took a wrong turn. We’re supposed to be in Brazil, but this seems more like heaven to me.”

“Meat heaven,” Dan agreed.

Amy had to laugh at them; they were practically panting. “Swallow, all of you,” she said to the boys, “before the whole table gets flooded with drool.”

The waiters carved chicken and lamb onto Amy’s plate. Atticus took a little of everything, and Jake and Dan took a
lot
of everything.

The meat was delicious: charred and smoky outside, tender and juicy within. It had been ages since they’d taken the time to have a really good meal.

The waiters came around again, this time with sausages and bacon-wrapped shrimp. With each new wave of meat, the noises of appreciation made by the boys became less coherent.
Another serving or two and they’ll all be grunting like cavemen,
Amy thought.

With the deep sweet taste of a grilled red pepper in her mouth, Amy realized that for the last twenty minutes, she hadn’t thought of Isabel or the Vespers. She’d been thinking of nothing but food.

Instant guilt. Lots of it. Enough so that the pepper suddenly turned dry and savorless.

She made a silent deal with herself:
No guilt until I’m done eating. Then it’s back to work.
Her heart sank at the thought, so she took a bite of shrimp to cheer herself up.

They were all too busy eating to talk much, except to comment on the food. At last Amy looked up from her plate. Before she could even take a breath, another waiter had rushed over.

“Ribeye? I have ribeye here, very delicious.”

Amy held her hands up. “No, thank you. Really — I can’t eat another bite.”

“Flip your disk over,” Dr. Siffright suggested.

Amy complied. Dr. Siffright’s disk was already red-side up, and Amy noticed that she had eaten very little of what was on her plate. Dr. Siffright sat still except for her hands, which kept twiddling with her napkin.

The boys stayed in the game for one more round of skewers. Eventually Amy saw the pace of their forks begin to falter.

“Disks to red?” she said. She glanced at Dr. Siffright. “So no one will bother us for a while and we can talk.”

Dr. Siffright nodded as the boys flipped their disks. “Okay,” she said quietly. “Who wants to go first?”

It was hard to know where to start. After a few moments of uneasy silence, Amy prompted Jake to talk about Astrid’s interest in the Voynich and their recent trip to Yale.

“You went because of your mom?” Dr. Siffright asked.

“No, not exactly.” Jake looked at Amy for help.

Amy hesitated.

“It’s okay, Amy,” Atticus said. “Mom trusted her, so we should, too.”

Dr. Siffright stiffened. “Actually, the real question is whether
I
can trust
you
.”

Amy made up her mind quickly. She looked Dr. Siffright in the eye. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What Atticus meant was, we’re in trouble and we need your help. This is probably going to sound crazy, but our friends have been kidnapped. . . .”

With the three boys chipping in occasionally, Amy laid out the whole mess with the Vespers. Dr. Siffright listened without interrupting, intent but expressionless, pulling at a thread in her napkin.

When at last they were finished, a shroud of silence fell over the table. Amy waited as long as she could, then finally spoke.

“I know it sounds unbelievable,” she said, “but every word is the truth. If we don’t give Folio Seventy-four to the Vespers, one of our friends will die.”

Dr. Siffright frowned, clearly deep in thought. “I do believe you,” she said. “At least, I think I do. Actually, what you’ve said explains a lot.”

It was her turn now. “About a year and a half ago, I went to Italy. Like many people who learn about the Voynich, I’d become obsessed. I gave up trying to decode it, but I still want to know as much as I can about it. I decided to see if I could find any of the missing folios.”

Dr. Siffright went on to explain that she had indeed located a mysterious manuscript page. “I found it in a monastery — not the one where Voynich found the original manuscript, but a different one. They had hundreds of boxes, files, chests — all filled with old manuscripts. It took me months to comb through them.”

“And they let you take it?” Atticus asked.

Dr. Siffright smiled wanly. “For a price. Let’s just say, I live in a small apartment these days. I had to sell my house to get enough money to buy it.”

Amy resisted the urge to glance at her other tablemates.
She sold her house for it?! What Dr. James said about her — intense and single-minded when it comes to the Voynich — that sounds like an understatement now.

“It turns out someone else wanted it, too,” Dr. Siffright said. “Although I didn’t know that at first. I brought the folio back and began the process of authentication. I didn’t tell Yale or anyone else about it. I didn’t want to broadcast the fact that I had it, because if it proved not to be genuine, my reputation as a scholar could have been damaged.”

She was now twisting the napkin in earnest. “I’d been home for a few weeks when I started noticing strange things. First my car was broken into. And my apartment — twice. At work, they sent out a notice that several e-mail accounts at Brown had been hacked.

“Worst of all, I started to suspect that someone was following me. I asked myself a hundred times a day if it was real or if I was just being paranoid.”

She looked from Jake to Atticus and back again. “Astrid was the only person I could talk to about this. In fact, she said that similar things were happening to her, and like me, she thought it might be just her imagination.”

Amy saw the dismay on the faces of both Jake and Atticus as they exchanged glances.

“She never said anything to us,” Jake said.

“I wish we’d known!” Atticus said in distress. “Maybe we could have helped somehow —” He stopped, tears filling his eyes. He wiped them away angrily with his sleeve.

“She probably didn’t want to worry you,” Dr. Siffright said.

“That would be . . . like her,” Jake said, his voice catching a little.

Amy felt their pain in the pit of her stomach.
It’s bad enough when someone you love dies. But to think that they were afraid before they died . . .
She remembered the panic in Dan’s eyes when he was lying on the ground, and picked at the blister on her neck again. She knew she shouldn’t — it was getting irritated — but her hand kept going there of its own accord.

Dr. Siffright reached out to touch Atticus’s arm. “She wasn’t alone in this,” she said gently. “We were helping each other through it.”

Jake nodded. “Thanks,” he said.

After a moment, Dr. Siffright went on. “Astrid suggested that I hide the page somewhere very secure. At the time I had already booked a trip to Brazil — I love it, I’ve been here many times. So I brought the page with me and hid it here. It’s so remote — I thought it would be safe. But because I felt like I was being followed, I decided to let Astrid know where it was, just in case” — she paused — “anything happened to me.”

“That’s how we found you,” Atticus said. “The coded e-mails.”

Dr. Siffright smiled. “Nice job,” she said. “That tells me you’re Astrid’s kids for sure.”

“And we had help from Dr. James,” Jake said, “at Yale.”

“You met Kathryn?” Dr. Siffright said. “Did she tell you I was crazy?” She laughed softly. “No, she wouldn’t, she’s too polite. But I know she thinks I am.” She paused. “The line between passionate and crazy can be a thin one. Maybe she’s right. I mean, here I am, guarding a piece of paper for months. . . .”

Dr. Siffright shrugged, then went on. “So, from what you’re telling me, if I wasn’t imagining things, then it’s the Vespers who’ve been following me.”

“And broke into your apartment and tried to hack your e-mail,” Dan said. “It sounds like exactly the sort of things they’d do.”

Dr. Siffright looked at Dan apologetically. “By the way, that’s why I pulled the knife on you,” she said. “I thought maybe you were part of — of whoever was following me.”

Dan shrugged. “I’d have done the same,” he said, then grinned. “But I’d have picked a way better knife.”

Amy decided that the conversation had gone on long enough. “Will you help us, Dr. Siffright? Will you give us the manuscript page? I promise that if there’s anything I can do to get it back to you, I will.”

Silence followed. Tension stiffened Amy’s shoulders; Dr. Siffright looked like she was about to make a decision.
And if it’s no, it’ll be final. She won’t change her mind.

A waiter was approaching the table. Their disks were still red-side up, but he came closer anyway, smiling broadly.

Amy felt a flare of annoyance.
Not now,
she thought.
Don’t bother us now. All the other waiters have left us alone — can’t you see that our disks are red?

As she picked up her disk to show him the red side, the thought echoed in her mind:
All the other waiters have left us alone. . . .

Amy screamed before she had even finished the thought.

“ATTICUS!”

The waiter’s smile contorted into a terrible leer. He whipped the huge knife off the tray and hurled it at Atticus; in the next split second, the knife was followed by the skewer.